Surtees was the son of a south-London motorcycle dealer and grew up steeped in two-wheeled competition. He had his first professional outing at age 14 in the sidecar of his father's Vincent before being disqualified when officials discovered his age. After winning at grasstrack level and earning a factory Norton ride in 1955, he accepted an offer from MV Agusta — taking the nickname figlio del vento, "son of the wind."
In 1956, Surtees won the 500cc world championship for MV Agusta. When Gilera and Moto Guzzi withdrew from Grand Prix racing at the end of 1957, he and MV Agusta dominated the two largest displacement classes for three consecutive seasons. Between 1958 and 1960, he won 32 of 39 races and became the first man to win the Senior TT at the Isle of Man three years in succession. In total, Surtees won four 500cc titles and three 350cc titles for a total of seven World Championships, taking 38 Grand Prix victories on two wheels.
Surtees switched to cars full-time in 1960 at the age of 26, making his Formula One debut for Team Lotus at Silverstone. The transition was immediate: a second-place finish in only his second World Championship race, at the British Grand Prix, and pole position at his third, the Portuguese Grand Prix. After seasons with Yeoman Credit (Cooper) and Bowmaker Racing (Lola), he joined Ferrari in 1963.
At Ferrari, Surtees delivered the definitive result of his car racing career. In 1964 he fought a three-way title battle against Jim Clark and Graham Hill that went to the season finale in Mexico. He entered the last race in third place in the championship and won it — along with the title — by a single point over Hill. It made him the only man ever to win World Championships on motorcycles and in Formula One.
The 1965 season saw Surtees badly hurt in a testing accident at Mosport Park in Canada while driving a Lola T70 sports car. A front upright casting broke, and the resulting crash was severe enough to leave one side of his body four inches shorter than the other until doctors reset the fractures.
In 1966, following a dispute over car assignments at Le Mans, Surtees quit Ferrari mid-season. The departure almost certainly cost both him and the team the championship that year; without him Ferrari finished second in both the Drivers' and Constructors' standings. Surtees moved to Cooper-Maserati and won the final race of the year.
For 1966, Surtees also drove in the Can-Am sportscar series with a Lola T70, winning three of six races to take the inaugural championship. In December 1966, he signed with Honda. After early mechanical difficulties, the Honda RA300 proved quick enough at the 1967 Italian Grand Prix, where Surtees slipstreamed Jack Brabham to win by 0.2 seconds — Honda's second Formula One victory.
In 1970, Surtees founded his own team, the Surtees Racing Organisation, which competed in Formula 5000, Formula 2, and Formula One as a constructor until 1978. He retired from competitive driving in 1972. The team's greatest success came that same year when Mike Hailwood won the European Formula 2 Championship.
After motorsport, Surtees ran a motorcycle shop and a Honda car dealership, and chaired A1 Team Great Britain in the A1 Grand Prix series from 2005 to 2007. His son Henry Surtees, who had followed him into single-seater racing, was killed during a Formula 2 race at Brands Hatch on 19 July 2009. In his son's memory, Surtees founded the Henry Surtees Foundation in 2010 to support victims of accidental brain injuries and promote safety in motorsport.
Surtees was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1996 and was appointed CBE in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to motorsport. He died of respiratory failure at St George's Hospital, London, on 10 March 2017, aged 83. He remains the only person in history to have won World Championships on both motorcycles and in Formula One cars.