Had he been born a decade earlier John Michael Hawthorn might have been a heroic Spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain. Instead, the circumstances in his formative years led him into motorsport and he became Britain’s first world driving champion. Two year’s after Mike’s birth on April 10, 1929, his racing enthusiast father Leslie bought a garage near the Brooklands circuit in Farnham, Surrey, where he had raced motorcycles prior to World War II. Inspired by the proximity of Brooklands, and by the atmosphere in the Hawthorn garage where cars and motorcycles were prepared for competition, Mike was only nine years old when he decided he wanted to become a racer.
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