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This article first appeared in GP Racing magazine.
For a decade and a half the Ford-Cosworth DFV engine was the common denominator of some of the most successful grand prix cars, powering 12 world champion drivers from Graham Hill in 1968 to Keke Rosberg in 1982.
Tyrrell was one of the teams that came to epitomise success in this era: small, agile and innovative in its own way, it built solidly engineered cars that handled sweetly and ran reliably. Given the level playing field the Cosworth engine created, Tyrrell was a pacesetter in the early 1970s and generally there or thereabouts for the remainder of the decade.
By the 1980s, though, this approach had hit diminishing returns as a new generation of turbocharged engines made power a differentiator again, and 'ground-effect' aerodynamics demanded additional investment in research and development.
