Tyrrell Racing facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Tyrrell

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	Patrick Depailler 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 Mika Salo
Next name	British American Racing
Formula One World Championship career
First entry	1968 South African Grand Prix (as Matra International) 1970 South African Grand Prix (as Tyrrell Racing Organisation)
Races entered	23 entries (23 starts) (as Matra International) 442 entries (440 starts) (as Tyrrell Racing Organisation)
Constructors	Matra March Tyrrell
Constructors' Championships	1 (1971) (as Tyrrell Racing Organisation)
Drivers' Championships	3 (1969 as Matra International, 1971, 1973 as Tyrrell Racing Organisation)
Race victories	9 (as Matra International) 24 (as Tyrrell Racing Organisation)
Pole positions	2 (as Matra International) 17 (as Tyrrell Racing Organisation)
Fastest laps	9 (as Matra International) 18 (as Tyrrell Racing Organisation)
Final entry	1969 Mexican Grand Prix (as Matra International) 1998 Japanese Grand Prix (as Tyrrell Racing Organisation)

The Tyrrell Racing Organisation was an auto racing team and Formula One constructor founded by Ken Tyrrell (1924–2001) 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 the 1983 Detroit Grand Prix. The team was bought by British American Tobacco in 1997 and completed its final season as Tyrrell in the 1998 Formula One season. Tyrrell's legacy continues in Formula One as the Mercedes-AMG F1 team, who is Tyrrell's descendant through various sales and rebrandings via BAR, Honda, and Brawn GP.

Lower formulas (1958–1967)

Tyrrell Racing first came into being in 1958, running Formula Three cars for Ken Tyrrell and local stars. Realising 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. 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 BRM's Formula One team. The team then signed a deal to run F2 cars made by French company Matra. Tyrrell's first entry into a World Championship Grand Prix was at the 1966 German Grand Prix, entering F2-spec Matra MS5s for Ickx and Hubert Hahne. Hahne finished 9th, runner-up of the F2 cars. However, Ickx was involved in a first-lap crash with the Brabham of John Taylor, who later died from burns sustained in the accident. Tyrrell later entered the 1967 German Grand Prix with an F2 car for Ickx, this time the Matra MS7. Ickx qualified with the 3rd-fastest time, however F2 cars were required to start the race from the back of the grid. He ran as high as 5th before retiring from the race with a broken suspension.

Formula One (1968–1998)

1960s

Jackie Stewart and Tyrrell won their first championship with the French Matra chassis.

With the help of Elf and Ford, Tyrrell then achieved his dream of moving to Formula One in 1968 as a team principal for the team officially named Matra International, a joint-venture established between Tyrrell's own privateer team and the French auto manufacturer Matra. Stewart was a serious contender, winning three 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.

For the 1969 championship, the Matra works team decided not to compete in Formula One. Matra would instead focus its efforts on Ken Tyrrell's 'Matra International' team and build a new DFV powered car with structural fuel tanks, even though it would only be eligible for a single season. Stewart won the 1969 title easily, driving the new Cosworth-powered Matra MS80 which corrected most of the weaknesses of the MS10. Stewart's title was the first won by a French car, and the only one won by a car built in France as well as by a car entered by a privateer team. It was a spectacular achievement from the British team and the French constructor that both had only entered Formula One the previous year.

1970s

Tyrrell's first F1 car, the 001, being demonstrated at the 2008 Goodwood Festival of Speed

The Tyrrell P34 six-wheeler

For the 1970 season following Matra's merger with Simca, Tyrrell were asked by Matra to use their V12 rather than the Cosworth. Simca was a subsidiary of the American company Chrysler, a rival of Ford. Stewart tested the Matra V12 and found it inferior to the DFV. As a large part of the Tyrrell budget was provided by Ford, and another significant element came from French state-owned petroleum company Elf, which had an agreement with Renault that precluded supporting a Simca partner, Ken Tyrrell had little alternative but to buy a March 701 chassis as interim solution while developing his own car in secret. As a result, the name of his team Matra International was officially changed to Tyrrell Racing Organisation at the beginning of the 1970 season.

Tyrrell was 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 with mixed success, while Derek Gardner worked on the first in-house Tyrrell Grand Prix car at the woodshed in Ockham, Surrey.

The privateer team owned by Ken Tyrrell, which competed under the name Matra International from 1968 to 1969 and under the name Tyrrell Racing Organisation in 1970, won 10 races in total during this period with the Matra MS10, Matra MS80 and March 701 cars as well as one World Drivers' Championship (in 1969 with the Matra MS80 car), thus becoming the most successful privateer team in Formula One history.

The Tyrrell 001, which bore much resemblance to the Matra MS80, emerged at the end of the 1970 season in the Canadian GP where Stewart achieved a pole position, making Tyrrell one of only a few constructors that achieved a pole position at the very first race. However, the car suffered mechanical failures in all of its three race starts. The nearly identical Tyrrell 003 won both Drivers' and Constructors' Championships in 1971, with strong driving from Jackie Stewart and François Cevert. Stewart's 1972 challenge was ruined by a stomach ulcer, but he returned to full fitness in 1973. He and Cevert finished first and fourth in the Championship, but Cevert was killed in practice for the final race of the season, the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen. Stewart, who was to retire at the end of the season, and Tyrrell immediately stood down, effectively handing the Constructors' title to Lotus. At the end of the season Stewart made public his decision to retire, a decision that was already made before the US Grand Prix. 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 (and only) 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 tyres needed for the car as they were too busy fighting the other tyre manufacturers in Formula One.

Ken Tyrrell had been spending a lot of his own money running his team, but in the summer of 1979 he finally found a sponsor: Italian appliance manufacturing group Candy put up the money to run the 009, fielded by Jarier and Pironi.

1980s

The Tyrrell 012 (pictured at the 2008 Goodwood Festival of Speed) raced from 1983 to 1985.

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 to race with the Cosworth DFV when all other teams had switched to turbocharged engines; during the height of FISA-FOCA war, Ken Tyrrell was adamant that turbochargers constitute a form of turbine, which had been banned in 1971, a protest that was rejected by FIA stewards. 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 (the Tyrrell 011), driven by Michele Alboreto at the 1983 Detroit Grand Prix. It was also Tyrrell's last Grand Prix win.

1990s

Mika Salo driving for Tyrrell at the 1995 British Grand Prix

"Tora" Takagi driving the Tyrrell 026 at the 1998 Spanish Grand Prix

Tyrrell struggled on through the 1980s and 1990s – the team consistently punching above their financial weight following the 1984 controversy, despite winning the Colin Chapman Trophy for naturally-aspirated constructors in 1987 following Renault's withdrawal that year. There was a brief revival of fortunes in the early 1990s. The combination of Harvey Postlethwaite's revolutionary anhedral 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, but Honda engines and Braun sponsorship in 1991 helped Stefano Modena earn a front row start at Monaco alongside Senna and a fine second-place finish at the 1991 Canadian Grand Prix. Nonetheless, the team slowly dropped back from the middle of the pack. Tyrrell's last F1 points were scored by Mika Salo at the 1997 Monaco Grand Prix.

Eventually, and in the face of dwindling form and ill health, Ken sold his team after the 1997 season to Craig Pollock, who at the same time was building British American Racing with his funding and sponsor partner British American Tobacco. Ken left the team following the sale, just before the start of the 1998 season, after a disagreement with Pollock over him choosing Ricardo Rosset for sponsorship money reasons over Jos Verstappen.

The final race for Tyrrell was the 1998 Japanese Grand Prix, where Rosset failed to qualify and teammate Tora Takagi retired on lap 28 after a collision with Esteban Tuero's Minardi.

Legacy

The double championship-winning Brawn GP team of 2009 and the present Mercedes team can loosely be said to be descendants of Tyrrell, through its predecessors, Honda Racing F1 and BAR. While BAR bought the Tyrrell F1 team and entry, they used a different factory, chassis builder and engine – most of the former Tyrrell cars and equipment were sold to Paul Stoddart, later owner of the Minardi F1 team.

When team boss Ross Brawn led a management buyout of the Honda F1 team to compete in the 2009 season, a revival of the Tyrrell name was briefly considered when deciding what to call the new team.

As of the 2024 São Paulo Grand Prix, the teams which descended from Tyrrell have won 128 Grands Prix, 8 Drivers' championships (one as Brawn in 2009 and the rest as Mercedes from 2014 to 2020) and 9 Constructors' championships (one as Brawn in 2009 and the rest as Mercedes from 2014 to 2021).

The Minardi 2-seater F1 cars are modifications of the 1998 Tyrrell 026 design, most noticeable in the distinctive shape of the nose of the car. These cars still run in demos today, most recently as demo cars during the launch of the Yas Marina F1 track.

Ken Tyrrell died of cancer on 25 August 2001 at the age of 77.

Racecars

Year	Car	Image	Category
1970	Tyrrell 001		Formula One
1971	Tyrrell 002		Formula One
	Tyrrell 003		Formula One
1972	Tyrrell 004		Formula One
	Tyrrell 005		Formula One
	Tyrrell 006		Formula One
1974	Tyrrell 007		Formula One
1976	Tyrrell P34		Formula One
1977	Tyrrell P34B		Formula One
1978	Tyrrell 008		Formula One
1980	Tyrrell 009		Formula One
1981	Tyrrell 010		Formula One
	Tyrrell 011		Formula One
1983	Tyrrell 012		Formula One
1985	Tyrrell 014		Formula One
1986	Tyrrell 015		Formula One
1987	Tyrrell DG016		Formula One
1988	Tyrrell 017		Formula One
1989	Tyrrell 017B		Formula One
	Tyrrell 018		Formula One
1990	Tyrrell 019		Formula One
1991	Tyrrell 020		Formula One
1992	Tyrrell 020B		Formula One
1993	Tyrrell 020C		Formula One
	Tyrrell 021		Formula One
1994	Tyrrell 022		Formula One
1995	Tyrrell 023		Formula One
1996	Tyrrell 024		Formula One
1997	Tyrrell 025		Formula One
1998	Tyrrell 026		Formula One

Formula One World Championship results

Formula One results
(Bold indicates championships won.)
Year	Name	Car	Engine	Tyres	Drivers	Points	WCC
1966	Matra International	MS5	Cosworth SCA 1.0 L4 BRM P80 1.0 L4	D	Jacky Ickx Hubert Hahne	N/A	N/A
1967	Matra International	MS5	Cosworth FVA 1.6 L4	D	Jacky Ickx	N/A	N/A
1968	Matra International	MS9 MS10	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	D	Jackie Stewart Jean-Pierre Beltoise Johnny Servoz-Gavin	N/A	N/A
1969	Matra International	MS10 MS80 MS84 MS7	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8 Cosworth FVA 1.6 L4	D	Jackie Stewart Jean-Pierre Beltoise Johnny Servoz-Gavin	N/A	N/A
1970	Tyrrell Racing Organisation	March 701 Tyrrell 001	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	D	Jackie Stewart François Cevert Johnny Servoz-Gavin	0	NC
1971	Elf Team Tyrrell	001 002 003	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G	Jackie Stewart François Cevert Peter Revson	73	1st
1972	Elf Team Tyrrell	002 003 004 005 006	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G	Jackie Stewart François Cevert Patrick Depailler	51	2nd
1973	Elf Team Tyrrell	005 006	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G	Jackie Stewart François Cevert Chris Amon	82	2nd
1974	Elf Team Tyrrell	005 006 007	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G	Jody Scheckter Patrick Depailler	52	3rd
1975	Elf Team Tyrrell	007	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G	Jody Scheckter Patrick Depailler Michel Leclère Jean-Pierre Jabouille	25	5th
1976	Elf Team Tyrrell	007 P34	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G	Jody Scheckter Patrick Depailler	71	3rd
1977	First National City Elf Team Tyrrell	P34	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G	Ronnie Peterson Patrick Depailler	27	5th
1978	First National City Elf Team Tyrrell	008	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G	Patrick Depailler Didier Pironi	38	4th
1979	Candy Tyrrell Team	009	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G	Didier Pironi Jean-Pierre Jarier Geoff Lees Derek Daly	28	5th
1980	Candy Tyrrell Team	009 010	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G	Jean-Pierre Jarier Derek Daly Mike Thackwell	12	6th
1981	Tyrrell Racing Team	010 011	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	M A	Eddie Cheever Kevin Cogan Ricardo Zunino Michele Alboreto	10	8th
1982	Team Tyrrell	011	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G	Slim Borgudd Brian Henton Michele Alboreto	25	7th
1983	Benetton Tyrrell Team	011 012	Cosworth DFV 3.0 V8	G	Danny Sullivan Michele Alboreto	12	7th
1984	Tyrrell Racing Organisation	012	Cosworth DFY 3.0 V8	G	Martin Brundle Stefan Johansson Stefan Bellof Mike Thackwell	0	DSQ
1985	Tyrrell Team	012 014	Cosworth DFY 3.0 V8 Renault EF4B 1.5 V6 t	G	Martin Brundle Stefan Johansson Stefan Bellof Ivan Capelli Philippe Streiff	4 (Tyrrell-Cosworth) 3 (Tyrrell-Renault)	9th (Tyrrell-Cosworth) 10th (Tyrrell-Renault)
1986	Data General Team Tyrrell	014 015	Renault EF4B 1.5 V6 t	G	Martin Brundle Philippe Streiff	11	7th
1987	Data General Team Tyrrell	DG016	Ford Cosworth DFZ 3.5 V8	G	Jonathan Palmer Philippe Streiff	11	6th
1988	Tyrrell Racing Organisation	017	Ford Cosworth DFZ 3.5 V8	G	Jonathan Palmer Julian Bailey	5	8th
1989	Tyrrell Racing Organisation	017B 018	Ford Cosworth DFR 3.5 V8	G	Jonathan Palmer Johnny Herbert Michele Alboreto Jean Alesi	16	5th
1990	Tyrrell Racing Organisation	018 019	Ford Cosworth DFR 3.5 V8	P	Satoru Nakajima Jean Alesi	16	5th
1991	Braun Tyrrell Honda	020	Honda RA101E 3.5 V10	P	Satoru Nakajima Stefano Modena	12	6th
1992	Tyrrell	020B	Ilmor 2175A 3.5 V10	G	Olivier Grouillard Andrea de Cesaris	8	6th
1993	Tyrrell	020B 021	Yamaha OX10A 3.5 V10	G	Ukyo Katayama Andrea de Cesaris	0	NC
1994	Tyrrell Racing Organisation	022	Yamaha OX10B 3.5 V10	G	Ukyo Katayama Mark Blundell	13	7th
1995	Nokia Tyrrell Yamaha	023	Yamaha OX10C 3.5 V10	G	Ukyo Katayama Mika Salo Gabriele Tarquini	5	8th
1996	Tyrrell Yamaha	024	Yamaha OX11A 3.5 V10	G	Ukyo Katayama Mika Salo	5	8th
1997	PIAA Tyrrell Ford	025	Ford ED4 3.0 V8 Ford ED5 3.0 V8	G	Jos Verstappen Mika Salo	2	10th
1998	PIAA Tyrrell	026	Ford JD Zetec-R 3.0 V10	G	Ricardo Rosset Toranosuke Takagi	0	NC

See also

In Spanish: Tyrrell Racing para niños