My hero

By John Surtees

“Growing up during World War II limited the scope for sporting hero worship, but two magazine pictures salvaged from our bombed-out house stuck with me. The first was of Georg Meier riding a supercharged BMW bike wheels off the ground at Bray Hill during the 1939 Senior TT on the Isle of Man. The other was of a Mercedes-Benz W125 at Donington Park with Rudolf Caracciola at the wheel. In 1980 I was fortunate enough to find Meier’s BMW, the one from the photo, and put it back together again. I used it all over the world until I let it to go to the museum in Munich. In 1987 Mercedes asked me to drive some cars. The first they put me in was a W125 at Spa. It was Caracciola’s car.”