On This Week #12: Mike the Bike, the man who saw it coming
Stanley Michael Bailey Hailwood, who died on this week 44 years ago, was also known as “Mike the Bike” – which tells you a lot about his extraordinary range of talents. For many people, this motorbike champion turned grand prix racer was one of the most versatile competitors who ever lived.
On bikes, he was indisputably one of the greatest, with four 500cc titles (37 wins), two 350cc titles (16 wins) and three 250cc titles (21 wins), as well as 14 wins at the Isle of Man TT.
In cars, it seemed that on the face of it, he wasn't perhaps as much of a natural convert as his compatriot who made a similar switch: 1964 F1 World Champion John Surtees.
But when Hailwood made his Formula 1 debut in 1963, he didn't have anything like the same equipment as Surtees: instead he drove a year-old Lotus-Climax run by Reg Parnell Racing. This made results such as sixth in the 1964 Monaco Grand Prix far better than they appeared.
As a result, his schedule was pretty packed until 1968, when Honda pulled out of bike racing but paid him not to ride for anyone else. That opened the door to a proper focus on cars, and it wasn't long before the results started coming: and not just in Formula 1. He finished third at the 1969 Le Mans in a Ford GT40 and was also third in Formula 5000 that year.
So it was inevitable that he would return to Formula 1, and equally inevitable that it would be with the Surtees team.
John Surtees was still racing himself in 1971, and the line-up of two bike champions helped them both to get the best out of each other. Hailwood was fourth in the 1971 Italian Grand Prix – the scene of the closest finish in F1 history – and nearly won the South African Grand Prix the following year before his car's suspension broke.
He never did get that win in F1, although he brought Surtees the 1972 Formula 2 crown. His efforts in the top category paid off when he was signed by McLaren in 1974, alongside eventual champion Emerson Fittipaldi, and Denny Hulme. Hailwood racked up four top-five finishes (including a podium at Kyalami) in the first part of the season, before a crash at the Nurburgring badly broke his legs, leaving him with a permanent limp. Aged 34, he decided to retire from racing and move to New Zealand.
That's where the story should have ended – but ‘Mike the Bike' couldn't let it go. He started racing bikes once more in the Southern Hemisphere, and by 1978 he was back winning the TT. To crown a successful career, he won the Senior TT the following year, and then, approaching 40, he really did call it quits. A well-deserved retirement awaited.
But let's go back just over a decade earlier. In 1967, Hailwood had met a young Canadian automotive engineer called Elizabeth McCarthy at Canada's first ever motorbike grand prix, held at Mosport Park in Ontario. Their relationship blossomed, to the point that Hailwood even proposed marriage.
The following is Elizabeth's account of their conversations, published in 2010:
“One night he mentioned marriage again and pressed for an answer. I told him that I didn't think I could bear to watch him risk his life every weekend for the entertainment of a crowd of people, many of whom would just as soon see a spectacular crash as anything else.
He replied: ‘I'm not going to be killed on a race track, so you don't need to worry about that.'
I was startled. ‘How can you be so sure?' I asked.
He proceeded to tell me something that he said he hadn't told anyone else. ‘When I was 18, I was starting racing in South Africa. One Saturday night, after a day of racing, some of us went to a nightclub in Durban. There were eight of us, all about the same age, sitting at one table. A very old Indian fortune-teller came into the club. He came over to us to read our palms. He proceeded to tell us our fortunes and how each of us would die. He said that none of us would live past the age of 40. I would be the last to die. I would be killed by one of those damn lorries, so, you see, it won't happen on a track.' I was stunned.”
At the time of their conversation, Hailwood apparently told Elizabeth that three of the eight were no longer alive, although he never said who they all were.
Mike Hailwood passed away on 23 March 1981 after a lorry made an illegal U turn on a road close to his home in Warwickshire, England. At the wheel of a Rover SD1, he couldn't avoid the collision. His nine-year-old daughter, Michelle, was killed instantly, while Hailwood died two days later from his injuries. He was 10 days short of his 41st birthday.
