Ken Tyrrell’s Story
He Found His True Formula One Calling
In the world of open-wheel racing, few had a better eye than Ken Tyrrell. If you were in search of the proverbial needle in a haystack, Tyrrell could find it.
Looking for undiscovered talent for a Formula One team? Tyrrell could discern it.
Want a winner? Tyrrell could cultivate it.
If you have never heard of Tyrrell, it’s a good bet you have heard of the drivers he helped make famous.
He was the owner who launched the racing career of three-time F1 champion Jackie Stewart. He made Italian F1 driver Michele Alboreto. He found Martin Brundle and countless others.
He was to racing what the unrecognized, hardworking, drive-throughthe-night scout is for the best teams in majorleague baseball.
“Without Ken Tyrrell, I would not be where I am today,” Jackie Stewart said in August 2001 after hearing the news of Tyrrell’s death at 77 after a long fight with cancer.
In the chronicles of racing, Tyrrell was the ultimate in selflessness. Always able to find something good in someone else, but never good enough to find the best for himself, he was one of the sport’s most influential race-team owners in the 1970s.
He began with nothing; he died without much more. But it was what he achieved in the middle that made Robert Kenneth Tyrrell a unique story.
A timber merchant and woodcutter by trade, he flew with the British military in the Second World War. After, he went back into the timber business and made a fortune selling wood in war-ravaged Britain. But his heart was in racing, a passion he developed as a child.
What’s more, Tyrrell’s ability to assess talent is what separated him from his peers. His first case study: himself. As a Formula Three openwheel driver in 1951, Tyrrell had only average talent. He knew that. As a manager, though, he excelled.
Four years into a racing career in the minor leagues, he began preparing cars for other drivers. One of his first drivers was Henry Taylor, whom he hired to run his Formula Two team. Tyrrell’s relationship with sponsors grew and, in 1960, the Tyrrell Racing Organization was formed.
His next driver in F3, a young Scot with a fire and skill like few others, would be a knockout. Jackie Stewart wouldn’t just put Tyrrell Racing on the map, he helped Tyrrell redraw the racing landscape.
Stewart won the F3 British title in 1964 and a year later helped Tyrrell enter Formula Two with a two-car team and legendary driver Jacky Ickx. Two years later, Tyrrell decided to enter Formula One. With Stewart as the main driver, the team had many victories and Stewart finished second in the points.
In 1969, Stewart, who was joined by Frenchman Jean-Pierre Beltoise, won the World Championship. Two years later they would do it again.
Tyrrell’s dream had become reality.
At 6'5" and well over 250 pounds, “Uncle Ken,” as he was affectionately known on the circuit, had become a giant in the industry, the winner of the “constructor’s title” and quickly emerged as a man with an eye for talent.
He could pick winners out of a group, and he could build them into champions. Jody Scheckter, Ronnie Peterson and Patrick Depailler were all cultivated by Tyrrell.
But what racing gave him, it also took away.
During a practice run for the United States Grand Prix in 1973, Tyrrell’s driver Francois Cevert crashed on the course and died. Tyrrell’s team withdrew from the race and its owner was never the same. He lost focus and his team lost momentum. Stewart, a longtime advocate of racing safety, hung up his driving gloves shortly after and Tyrrell began to slowly slip off the F1 radar.
When Renault and Ligier became frontrunners in 1979, the French oil company Elf decided to concentrate its efforts on Renault and withdrew Tyrrell’s sponsorship. Tyrrell’s team struggled to find money and had to resort to hiring unknown young drivers, which in turn launched the careers of Alboreto, Stefan Bellof, Brundle and Jean Alesi. The team remained competitive enough to win a few more times, but by the mid1980s, Tyrrell was nearly broke. His team ran without sponsorship and as Tyrrell developed and nurtured new drivers, they eventually left for other more successful teams with more funding.
In 1989, Tyrrell celebrated his 65th birthday by driving one of the team’s trucks to Monaco because there was no one else to do it. Within a few years, Tyrrell relinquished much of his company’s control to his sons and outside investors. In 1998, the Tyrrell F1 team was bought by British American Tobacco and Craig Pollock to create British American Racing (BAR Honda).
On Aug. 25, 2001, Ken Tyrrell fought his last uphill battle, succumbing to cancer.
Stewart said he never met a better man. So many other unknowns who became known wouldn’t disagree.