Tyrrell Racing
Tyrrell was an
auto racing team and
Formula One constructor founded by
Ken Tyrrell. The team experienced its greatest success in the early 1970s, when it won three drivers' championships and one constructors' championship with
Jackie Stewart. The team never reached such heights again, although it continued to win races through the 1970s and into the early 1980s, taking the final win for the Ford Cosworth DFV engine at Detroit in 1983. The team was bought by
British American Racing in 1997 and completed its final season as Tyrrell in 1998.
Tyrrell Racing first came into being in
1958, running
Formula Three cars for Ken Tyrrell and local stars. Realizing he was not racing driver material, Ken Tyrrell stood down as a driver in
1959, and began to run a
Formula Junior operation using the woodshed owned by his family business,
Tyrrell Brothers, as a workshop. Throughout the
1960s, Tyrrell moved through the lower formulas, variously giving single seater debuts to
John Surtees and
Jacky Ickx. But the team's most famous partnership was the one forged with
Jackie Stewart, who first signed up in
1963.
Tyrrell ran the
BRM Formula 2 operation throughout
1965,
1966 and
1967 whilst Stewart was signed to the
Formula One team. Tyrrell then signed a deal to run
Formula 2 cars made by French company
Matra.
 |
Tyrrell P34 6-wheeler - arguably the most radical F1 car ever to have raced. |
With the help of
Elf and
Ford, Tyrrell then achieved his dream of moving to Formula 1 in 1968, as team principal for Matra International, a joint-venture established between Tyrrell's own team and the French auto manufacturer
Matra. Stewart won his first
Formula One World Championship in
1969 driving a
Cosworth-powered
Matra MS80.
For the 1970 season, Matra insisted on using their own V12 engines, while Tyrrell and Stewart wanted to keep the Cosworth engines as well as the good connection to Ford. As a consequence, the Tyrrell team bought a chassis from March Engineering, which Stewart drove with mixed success until Tyrrell built its own car later in the season. They were still sponsored by French fuel company Elf , and Tyrrell would retain the traditional French blue racing colours for most of the rest of its existence. Tyrrell and Stewart ran the March-Fords throughout 1970, while
Derek Gardner worked on the first in-house Tyrrell
Grand Prix car at the woodshed in
Ockham, Surrey.
Emerging in
1971, the Tyrrell 001 won both drivers' and constructors' championships that year, with a driving strength of Jackie Stewart and
François Cévert. Stewart's
1972 challenge was hamstrung by a stomach
ulcer, but he returned to full fitness in
1973. He and Cévert finishing 1st and 2nd in the Championship. Tragedy struck on
October 6th, 1973, as Cévert was killed in practice for the
US Grand Prix at
Watkins Glen. Stewart, who was to retire at the end of the season, immediately stood down. Without their star driver or his skilled French protégé aboard, Tyrrell were never serious World Championship contenders again.
Despite this, the team remained a force throughout the
1970s, winning races with
Jody Scheckter and Patrick Depailler. Most notable of these was Scheckter's triumph at the
1976 Swedish Grand Prix, giving Tyrrell a 1-2 finish driving the distinctive
Derek Gardner designed
Tyrrell P34 car. The P34 was the first successful six-wheeler F1 car, which replaced the conventional front wheels with smaller wheels mounted in banks of two on either side of the car. The design was abandoned after
Goodyear refused to develop the small tires needed for the car as they were too busy fighting the other tire manufacturers in Formula One.
In
1977, the
Turbo era dawned in Grand Prix racing, which was, by the mid-
1980s, to render normally aspirated engined cars obsolete. Without the proper funding, Tyrrell was the last resistant with the
Cosworth DFV at a time all teams had switched to turbocharged engines. It was the beginning of two decades of struggle for Tyrrell, who was often underfunded through lack of sponsorship. It seemed appropriate, then, that the final win for the classic
Cosworth Ford DFV engine was taken by a Tyrrell car,
Michele Alboreto at the
1983 Detroit Grand Prix. It was also Tyrrell's last Grand Prix win. During the
1984 season, Tyrrell were disqualified from the year's standings after it was discovered they had been illegally putting
lead in their
fuel tank at the
Detroit race.
Tyrrell struggled on through the 1980s and
1990s - although their insubstantial on-track performances were not matched by the sway which Ken Tyrrell held behind the scenes in Grand Prix politics. There was a brief revival of fortunes in the early 1990s. The combination of
Harvey Postlethwaite's revolutionary high-nose
Tyrrell 019 and
Jean Alesi's full debut season in 1990 brought the team two second places at
Phoenix and
Monaco - Alesi having led 30 laps of the Phoenix race. The French-Sicilian left the next year for Ferrari and, although
Honda engines and
Braun sponsorship in
1991 and
1992 went some way to making up for this, the team slowly dropped back from the middle of the pack. Eventually, in
1998 and in the face of dwindling form and ill health, Ken was forced to sell his team to
British American Tobacco, the team becoming
British American Racing. The final race for Tyrrell was the
1998 Japanese Grand Prix, where
Ricardo Rosset failed to qualify and team-mate
Toranosuke Takagi retired on lap 28 after a collision with a
Minardi.
Ken Tyrrell died of cancer on
August 25th,
2001.
*23 wins
*14
pole positions*20 fastest laps
*Twice World Drivers' Champions (
1971,
1973)
*Constructors' Champions (1971)
