- Ken Tyrrell
Ken Tyrrell (
May 3 ,1924 –August 25 2001 ) was a Britishauto racing driver and the founder of the TyrrellFormula One constructor.Biography
Tyrrell served in the
Royal Air Force duringWorld War II . After the war he became atimber merchant. In 1951 he began racing a Cooper inFormula 3 . A good but not great driver, he achieved a number of good placings and the occasional win but, realising he was not going to reach the top, Ken Tyrrell stood down as a driver in 1959, and began to run aFormula Junior team using the woodshed owned by his family business,Tyrrell Brothers , as a workshop.Tyrrell was responsible for discovering
Jackie Stewart , whom he had race for his team inFormula Junior in the mid 1960s. With the help of Elf and Ford, Tyrrell 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 manufacturerMatra .During his early years in F1, "Uncle" Ken, as he was affectionately known, reached the peak of his career. However, he was profoundly affected by the death of his driver
François Cevert in practice for the 1973 US Grand Prix. In the following years, Tyrrell would slip down the ranks until it became a midfielder team, despite having employed natural talents such asJody Scheckter ,Ronnie Peterson andPatrick Depailler .Still, Tyrrell found the time to introduce new concepts for F1. In 1976, the Tyrrell team created the six-wheeled P34, that had four front wheels. The Derek Gardner designed single-seater achieved a race victory but it was abandoned after Goodyear refused to develop the small tires needed for the car as they were too busy fighting the other tyre manufacturers in F1.
In the early 1980s, Tyrrell's fortunes decreased to the point where he had to run his team run without sponsorship. Tyrrell still retained his eye for talent, bringing
Michele Alboreto andMartin Brundle to F1, but never managed to retain them. Without the proper funding, Tyrrell was the last resistant with theCosworth DFV at a time when all other teams had switched to turbocharged engines. Alboreto scored the engine's last win in 1983, but in 1984 the team was excluded from the championship after being found to have run underweight cars before adding ballast during pit stops. Tyrrell denied this and felt his team was being singled out due to refusing to run more expensive turbos.In the early 1990s Tyrrell relinquished much of the company's control to his sons and to
Harvey Postlethwaite , who was the first to introduce the high-nose concept in the 1990 Tyrrell.Jean Alesi scored two second places in the car, and the team lead a lap for the last time. Their final podium finish was in 1994 fromMark Blundell , and their final points at the 1997 Monaco Grand Prix, with 5th position fromMika Salo .In 1997 the Tyrrell F1 team was bought by
British American Tobacco andCraig Pollock to createBritish American Racing . Tyrrell did not stay with the team for its last year under the Tyrrell name (1998), after Pollock insisted on hiringRicardo Rosset , who Tyrrell regarded as inferior to the also-availableJos Verstappen . OnAugust 25 2001 Ken Tyrrell died of cancer at the age of 77.External links
* [http://www.500race.org/ 500 Owners Association]
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