+5 Tyrrell: A handguide on perseverance, obstinance and unbridled passion for racing
Tyrrell: A handguide on perseverance, obstinance and unbridled passion for racing
Tyrrell: A handguide on perseverance, obstinance and unbridled passion for racing
Tyrrell: A handguide on perseverance, obstinance and unbridled passion for racing
Tyrrell: A handguide on perseverance, obstinance and unbridled passion for racing
Tyrrell: A handguide on perseverance, obstinance and unbridled passion for racing
Tyrrell: A handguide on perseverance, obstinance and unbridled passion for racing
Tyrrell: A handguide on perseverance, obstinance and unbridled passion for racing
In ‘Tyrrell. The Story of the Tyrrell Racing Organisation’, author Richard Jenkins managed to put together the complete history of Ken Tyrrell’s grand adventures in motor racing, passionately written. A captivating 480 pages await.
Here is the astonishing thing; what are considered to be Tyrrell’s glory years in Formula 1 – the three times Jackie Stewart took the world title between 1969 and 1973 – account for not even a quarter of the pages in the book. This sums it up nicely. Even if Tyrrell never managed to find back its form from the early seventies, here is a team that refused to give up and raced on right up until 1998. After which, Ken Tyrrell sold his beloved team to BAR, which later became Brawn GP and is currently known as Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Limited.
A shed in the woods
Richard Jenkins, who previously wrote the undervalued ‘Richie Ginther: Motor Racing’s Free Thinker’, spent time talking to previous employees (mechanics, engineers, drivers) at Tyrrell Racing. Next to this, he assembled a complete picture of how things happened through existing biographies and articles. The result is an extensive and compelling account of how Ken Tyrrell built a Formula 1 team out of a shed in the yard of his timber company in Ockham, in Surrey in the UK. Strange as it is, considering a Formula 1 team might have started from very humble beginnings, the most surprising aspect is how long Tyrrell used that shed.
Cevert
The book goes into every detail of Tyrrell’s history. The relatively short road towards Formula 1, the early success with Jackie Stewart and the Matra chassis, the decision to built 001, the first Tyrrell F1 chassis. The glory years with Stewart, the trauma François Cevert’s fatal accident caused, the unique-but-failed Tyrrell P34 six-wheeler, it’s all there.
Jenkins and publisher Evro decided to end several chapters with a portrait of some of the lesser-known heroes within Tyrrell: Derek Gardner and Maurice Philippe, of course, but also people like longtime ‘mechanics’ (they did much more) Neil Davis and Keith Boshier.
“I’ll drive the truck myself”
There are design sketches, tons and tons of photographs (also from Boshier’s private archive) and room for both the big story and the light anecdotes. Enlightening is the chapter on how Renault and its turbo engine and Tyrrell could have become a thing, already in the seventies. Tiny accounts often reveal a lot about the passion that drove Tyrrell and his crew. Like the time when a car was not ready in time for transport, and needed to be taken to the track by a third truck. “I’ll drive the truck myself,” said the then 65-year-old team owner Ken Tyrrell. No offense, Christian Horner, but I somehow doubt you’d do the same.
Racing is the only thing
In the end, Tyrrell managed to outlive both Brabham and Lotus. We find the chapters on Tyrrell’s struggles in the 80s and 90s actually the most interesting, as these are the most overlooked. They paint a picture of a boys club that kept on racing because… what else could they do? Formula 1 has always been a sport where money is the crucial component. That Tyrrell managed to hang on to Formula 1 for such a long time, without budget, says everything about Ken’s passion for the sport. Only Ferrari, McLaren and Williams to some extent can say they did the same.
A full history, complete with Tyrrell’s F1 results and a portrait of the F1 cars make ‘Tyrrell’ a bit of a no-brainer for the 100 euro asking price. The quality of the printing is good, but we had some printing errors on some pages in our copy. And at times, layout and the text are not aligned. A portrait on Michele Alboreto’s final stint at Tyrrell and his post-Tyrrell career would have deserved a nice portrait of the remarkable Italian driver to accompany that part of the text. Other than that, this is an outstanding effort. Well worth the buy.
Author: Richard Jenkins
ISBN: 9781910505670
Publisher: Evro Publishing
Pages: 482
Price: 100 euro (125 USD)
