NOW THAT WAS A CAR

The first in a line of world beaters was designed in a back bedroom and then constructed in a shed

Built in secret, the 001 was the precursor to Tyrrell title success

There is no blue plaque outside 23 Parklands Avenue, a modest suburban house in Lillington, near Leamington Spa. Perhaps there should be. For it was here, in a back bedroom and later the garage, that work began in utter secrecy on the first of a series of cars which would deliver a constructors’ championship and two drivers’ titles in the hands of Jackie Stewart. Why the secrecy? For all its modest trappings – HQ was a collection of sheds in a former woodyard in Ockham, Surrey – the Tyrrell Racing Organisation was a formidably competitive and well-drilled outfit, and in Stewart it had one of the finest drivers in the business. What Tyrrell had never done was build its own car so, when circumstances conspired to leave it without one, the team’s rivals were keen that it should remain competitively becalmed.

Ken Tyrrell and brother Bert were timber merchants, though for Ken the business of operating his eponymous race team took precedence once he realised he lacked the necessary skills to cut it as a racing driver himself. Through the 1960s the Tyrrell team acquired its reputation for hard-headed excellence in the junior formulae, running Stewart to the 1964 British F3 championship and then taking over BRM’S F2 operation before forging a partnership with Matra which would take it into F1.

Matra’s aerospace background informed a succession of slippery, strong but competitively light monocoque chassis, but its in-house engine – a V12 – was less convincing.

“WORKING FROM PHOTOGRAPHS OF EXISTING CARS, GARDNER INITIALLY LEANED TOWARDS THE WEDGE PROFILE WHICH WOULD SOON BECOME FASHIONABLE”

In 1968 its works team came away with a single podium for the V12-powered MS11, while Tyrrell and Jackie Stewart chalked up three wins and second in the drivers’ standings with a Ford-cosworth V8-engined MS10. The following year, Matra focused its works efforts on sportscar racing and Stewart romped to the F1 drivers’ title with the innovative side-tanked MS80. This would be the first and only time a private entry won both the drivers’ and constructors’ championships.

Stewart’s famous victory in the 1969 Italian GP made him champion with three rounds remaining. But even before he contested those final rounds, Stewart was aware the walls were closing in on Tyrrell. Matra was being acquired by Simca, part of the Chrysler empire, which would make continuing with the Ford engine in a Matra chassis politically impossible. Stewart had tested the V12 engine and found it sweet enough, but didn’t consider it a winner, for it lacked the brutal and instant shove furnished by Ford’s pugilistic DFV. A schism with Matra was inevitable, but Brabham, Mclaren and Lotus would not sell chassis to Tyrrell – why provide a car to one of your fiercest competitors? When Stewart arrived at Watkins Glen for the penultimate round, he also learned that Dunlop was about to withdraw from motor racing. The only glimmer of hope was that Elf remained committed as title sponsor.

Grudgingly and with due brinksmanship, Tyrrell concluded a deal with Max Mosley, salesman for March, the new chassis constructor, on the eve of the 1970 season. Ken also persuaded Dunlop to hold off on quitting the racing scene. In February, three weeks before the season-opening South African GP, Stewart tested the March 701 for the first time.

He hated it.

Though Stewart would qualify on pole at Kyalami and finish third in the March, this did nothing to diminish his impression that the car was not just inadequate, but that its shortcomings were fundamental to the design and could not be ironed out by fiddling with spring rates and corner weights. Fortunately, a solution was already coming together in Leamington Spa.

Initially only four people knew of the ‘Special Project’: Stewart, Ken Tyrrell and his wife Norah, and Derek Gardner, the little-known engineer building a prototype F1 car in his garage. Gardner had never designed a car before, his speciality being transmissions – which was how, via his involvement with Ferguson’s four-wheel-drive F1 project, he met Tyrrell when Matra evaluated 4WD. For Tyrrell, anxious to keep his plan below the radar, hiring a big-name designer was out of the question; someone quietly competent was his best bet.

Early in 1970 Tyrrell arranged a meeting with Gardner in a pub in Henley, figuring that was roughly halfway between Leamington Spa and Ockham, and suitably off the beaten track to avoid random encounters with any other racing folk. Tyrrell didn’t beat about the bush: could Gardner design a Formula 1 car, and do it in utmost secrecy?

After some initial misgivings Gardner agreed, shook hands on a deal, quit his job and set up as an independent engineering consultant, even going so far as to order stationery in the name of his new business to maintain the illusion. Confidence, though, remained in short supply. He would later recall watching a TV show in which Stewart was filmed testing the new March, and thinking, “There seemed to be no way I could compete with this sort of thing when I was a one-man band working from home”.

Working from photographs of existing cars, Gardner initially leaned towards the wedge profile which would soon become fashionable when the Lotus 72 became a success. Lacking space to accommodate the fuel tanks now the rules mandated rubber bags, he drifted back to a plan view which more closely resembled that of the MS80.

The first mock-up of the Special Project was a confection of wood, aluminium, chicken wire and cardboard. As the car took shape, so the circle of trust had to be widened as Ken’s longestserving staff were called upon to shuttle an engine and gearbox up to Warwickshire to be fitted to the mock-up under cover of darkness. Stewart, preparing for a couple of F2 outings in a John Coombs-run Brabham with a test at Goodwood, briefly excused himself and took a private plane to Coventry airport, where Gardner collected him to perform what would nowadays be called a seat fitting. The dimensions of the Special Project’s cockpit were adjusted to suit Stewart perfectly.

By June, rocked by the deaths of Piers Courage and Bruce Mclaren, Stewart was anxious to be rid of a car which could only produce a respectable laptime when pushed to the absolute limit. The Special Project, soon to be christened the 001, was by then proceeding to the sheet metal stage. Lacking the facilities to produce panels at Ockham, Tyrrell turned to Maurice Gomm, whose eponymous fabrication company was the go-to outfit of the day, working on projects as diverse as Brabham and Mclaren single-seaters, Lola sportscars, and even the titular vehicle from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang…

From Gomm’s works in Old Woking, the cut metal panels were delivered to Ockham for final assembly in a large shed by a handful of skilled mechanics led by Roy Topp. Stewart periodically stopped by so cockpit arrangements could be finessed. The world championship passed the half-way point; Stewart had won just one GP in the March, at Jarama, and that fortuitously. But the detailing of the new car, with its Matra-style, aeronautically inspired rows of pop rivets suggesting strength and durability, gave him cause for optimism.

By August the car was nearly ready, such that Tyrrell felt able to commit to a first race in the non-championship Oulton Park Gold Cup, a week before the Italian Grand Prix. Word about the 001 was beginning to leak out. Ron Dennis – then a mechanic at Brabham – accosted Tyrrell’s Nick Davis in the paddock during the weekend of the Austrian Grand Prix on 16 August, saying he was sure they were up to something. A stub in the sports pages of the Guardian the previous week had indeed reported Tyrrell was working on an F1 car of its own design.

Ken Tyrrell himself continued to deny the rumours – right up until Monday 17 August 1970, when the car was unveiled in Ford’s flagship dealership on Regent Street in London, resplendent in its blue livery. Max Mosley was said to be incandescent that Tyrrell had pulled off such subterfuge… and that the 001 was around 45kg lighter than the 701.

An unseasonal cold snap played havoc with the 001’s fuel metering at Oulton Park, leading Stewart to do the majority of practice and qualifying in the 701, which he put fifth on the grid. Playing the long game, he elected to start the 001 from the back and treat the first heat as an extended test. On the second lap the throttle cable jammed between the fuel hatch and the monocoque, sending him through the grass, but Stewart made it back to the pits where strategically placed tape enabled him to go out again. He broke the lap record en route to seventh, then a piston failure eliminated him from the second heat.

Further teething troubles at Monza moved Stewart to race the 701. On the weekend that claimed the life of Jochen Rindt, Stewart was relieved he had probably competed in the unloved March for the last time.

The final three rounds in North America added jet lag to the woes of mechanics who had been working round the clock for months to get the 001 ready. It continued to suffer frustrating teething troubles, such as when a wheel worked loose as qualifying approached in Canada. Stewart reverted to the 701 to set a time, but when the 001 was declared ready with minutes to spare, he eagerly swapped over and set pole position in the new car. In the race he was pulling away at a second a lap, certain of victory, when a stub axle broke.

In the two weeks between the races at Mont-tremblant and Watkins Glen, Gardner went back to the UK to redesign the front suspension uprights, returning with the new ones in his luggage. Given very little dry running in qualifying, Stewart ran Jacky Ickx’s Ferrari close to annex second on the grid, then led the race for 82 of the 108 laps. Stewart had a margin of one minute and had lapped everyone up to second-placed Pedro Rodríguez when smoke began to pour from the 001’s rear, the result of a tie wrap melting and allowing an oil pipe to rub against the exhaust. Tyrrell directed Stewart to stay out, but when the oil ran dry the engine seized.

Then, in Mexico, Stewart was running third, when a stray dog ran on to the track. At 140mph there was no time to react and the poor creature met its maker instantly. Stewart brought the 001 to a halt, its chassis and suspension stoved in. The car would see action in just one more world championship race, when Stewart took it to second in the 1971 opener at Kyalami.

Over the winter, Gardner transferred his office to Ockham and fed the experience of 001 into 002, which new recruit François Cevert would drive in 1971, and 003, with which Stewart would win eight races over the following two seasons and claim another world championship. 005 and 006 would deliver him to his final title in 1973. Stewart could see it coming.

“I felt I was going to be at my peak,” he would recall years later, “and I knew there was no need to fear failure with the Tyrrell project. We were ready to go.”

“THE FIRST MOCK-UP OF THE SPECIAL PROJECT WAS A CONFECTION OF WOOD, ALUMINIUM, CHICKEN WIRE AND CARDBOARD ”