SHED HEAVEN
MORE THAN 20 YEARS HAVE passed since its name last appeared on a grand prix entry list – and almost 40 since its most recent victory. For many, the Tyrrell Racing Organisation remains an institution, a symbol of a lost age wherein it was possible to build your own Formula 1 car and conquer the establishment. Little more than 50 years ago, Tyrrell secured the constructors’ championship for the only time – and in its first full season, too. “That was a big deal,” says the team’s talisman Sir Jackie Stewart, “and all the more so when you consider the team was run from a shed.”
F1 teams were significantly smaller back then (“We had seven mechanics to run two cars,” Stewart says), but serial world champions Lotus and Ferrari had their own test tracks within a stone’s throw of their factories. Ken Tyrrell? He was happy to operate from a woodshed that had previously been used by his family’s timber business.
The decision to become a constructor came about through circumstance. Stewart clinched the first of his world titles in 1969, at the wheel of a Tyrrell-run Matra, and the French firm wanted the partnership to
