Full name | Tyrrell Racing Organisation |
---|---|
Base | Ockham, Surrey, United Kingdom |
Founder(s) | Ken Tyrrell |
Noted staff |
Derek Gardner Mike Gascoyne Tim Densham Harvey Postlethwaite |
Noted drivers |
Jean Alesi Didier Pironi Jody Scheckter Jackie Stewart Andrea de Cesaris François Cevert Stefan Bellof Ronnie Peterson Derek Daly Jos Verstappen Martin Brundle Jonathan Palmer Michele Alboreto |
Next name | British American Racing |
Formula One World Championship career | |
First entry | 1968 South African Grand Prix |
Races entered | As a constructor: 432 entries (430 starts) As a team: 465 entries, 463 starts. |
Constructors |
Matra March Tyrrell |
Constructors' Championships |
1 (1971) |
Drivers' Championships |
3 (1969, 1971, 1973) |
Race victories | 33 |
Pole positions | 19 |
Fastest laps | 27 |
Final entry | 1998 Japanese Grand Prix |
Formula One World Championship career | |
---|---|
Entrants | Tyrrell Racing, several minor teams and privateers |
First entry | 1970 Canadian Grand Prix |
Last entry | 1998 Japanese Grand Prix |
Races entered | 432 entries (430 starts) |
Race victories | 23 |
Constructors' Championships | 1 (1971) |
Drivers' Championships |
2 (1971, 1973) |
Pole positions | 14 |
Fastest laps | 20 |
The Tyrrell Racing Organisation was an auto racing team and Formula One constructor founded by Ken Tyrrell which started racing in 1958 and started building its own cars in 1970. 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 Tobacco 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 Two operation throughout 1965, 1966 and 1967 whilst Stewart was signed to the Formula One team. Tyrrell then signed a deal to run Formula Two cars made by French company Matra.
With the help of Elf and Ford, Tyrrell then achieved his dream of moving to Formula One in 1968 as team principal for Matra International, a joint-venture established between Tyrrell's own team and the French auto manufacturer Matra. Stewart was a serious contender, winning several Grands Prix in the Tyrrell-run Matra MS10. The car's most innovative feature was the use of aviation-inspired structural fuel tanks. These allowed the chassis to be around 15 kg lighter while still being stronger than its competitors. The FIA considered the technology to be unsafe and decided to ban it for 1970, insisting on rubber bag-tanks.