Eddie Lawson
John Surtees
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
John Surtees leads 2 of 4 categories. Our all-time ranking places Eddie Lawson at #8 and John Surtees at #11.
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The case for Eddie Lawson
Four 500cc world championships, in 1984, 1986 and 1988 with Yamaha and in 1989 with Honda, making him the first rider to win back-to-back premier titles on machinery from different manufacturers. Rossi did not repeat the feat until 2004. Lawson's numbers, 31 wins and 78 podiums from 127 starts, understate a career built on a specific method: he raced the championship rather than the Grand Prix, taking the available result rather than the maximum one, which earned him the nickname Steady Eddie. In a two-stroke era where crashing was routine, his finishing rate was extraordinary. The 1989 switch to Honda, made to work with engineer Erv Kanemoto on a bike he had never ridden, is the single strongest line on his record: he beat the factory Yamahas he had just left.
The case for John Surtees
Seven world championships in nine seasons of Grand Prix racing: the 500cc title in 1956, 1958, 1959 and 1960, and the 350cc title in 1958, 1959 and 1960, taking the double in each of those three years. He won 38 Grands Prix, 22 of them in the premier class, almost all on MV Agusta after starting with Norton. In 1958 and 1959 he was close to unbeatable in both classes he contested. He then walked away from motorcycles at 26 and moved to cars, winning the 1964 Formula 1 world championship with Ferrari, which makes him the only person to have won world titles on two and four wheels. That crossover, together with his later career as a constructor, gives him a place on any list even though his motorcycle career was short.