Tyrrell ‘Shed’ takes in the world

Extraordinary tales from the Motor Sport digital archive

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F1 Retro – March 1998

Twenty-five years have now gone by since Ken Tyrrell announced his plucky gang of garagistas was selling up to British American Tobacco.

Tyrrell’s eponymous squad was the archetypal dynamic, independent F1 team in the early ’70s before it began a long slide to the back of the grid, but the founder’s insistence on doing things his own way endeared it to the rest of the racing world.

In this month’s F1 Retro, the March 2022 Shed heaven article by our editor-at-large Simon Arron, who died in November, details how Tyrrell took on the world from his family’s timber business base, with Jackie Stewart lending a word to tell the story.

“Of my three championship victories,” Stewart says, “1971 probably was the most special because it was Tyrrell’s first full season as a manufacturer. I think it was one of the most impressive things in the history of motor sport.

“It wasn’t like Mercedes-Benz or Auto Union coming in. This was a very competitive period and we ran our cars from this little wooden shed. But one of Ken’s great skills was choosing the right people and knowing how to look after them, so they were absolutely loyal to him all the way through.”

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