“In any team, the quickest driver is the one who comes to the fore. I never asked for number one status. When I went to Ferrari they said, ‘We’ll make you number one.’ I said, ‘I’ll be number one all the time I outperform whoever else is here.’ That was always my attitude in life.”
These were the words of the late John Surtees to this writer during the making of the book Real Racers: Formula 1 in the 1950s and 1960s some 15 years ago, and they came to mind in the aftermath of a Singapore Grand Prix in which the best drivers of the day finished first and second (although the increasingly absurd public vote granted this status to the guy classified seventh), but the news agenda was dominated by the soap opera between those who finished third and fourth.
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