The last hurrah of two F1 titans

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.

This was all a little too much for the relatively humble Tyrrell organisation, still based in the former timber yard that had been the home of team boss Ken Tyrrell's family business; famously, the team's early F1 cars had been drawn by former designer Derek Gardner in his spare bedroom and assembled in his garage. Times had changed.

When former Lotus and Parnelli engineer Maurice Phillippe (pictured below with Patrick Depailler in 1978) took over from Gardner in the summer of 1977 the revolution was underway: Lotus had introduced its 78, the first of the ground-effect cars, at the beginning of the season and Renault had launched its new 1.5-litre turbocharged car at the British Grand Prix.

Like the other Cosworth customers - including Lotus - Tyrrell had been striving to innovate elsewhere on the car to gain an advantage on its competitors but its solution, a six-wheeled chassis, proved to be a dead end. While we now view ground-effect aero as a competitive game-changer, in period it was not well understood - even by Lotus.

Several other teams remained convinced that the pace of the Lotus 78 and 79 could be attributed to some trickery Colin Chapman's team was performing with its differential. And when Chapman demanded his engineers generate even greater levels of peak downforce loadings in Lotus's successor cars, the anticipated gains didn't materialise.

Phillippe was initially tasked with re-engineering Tyrrell's P34 six-wheeler to accommodate the new Renault powertrain but, when that engine supply deal fell through, he set about designing a new car for 1978 with an active camber-control system he'd been experimenting with on his road car, a Ford Cortina.

Active camber theoretically offered a host of benefits including lower rolling resistance (and potentially greater speed) in a straight line, and more control over the slip angle of the tyres for better grip and stability in corners. But as a mechanical system rather than an electronic one it was difficult to perfect, and Phillippe was forced to shelve it in favour of conventional suspension.

Meanwhile Tyrrell's results continued to slide; 1977 was its first win-less season in a decade, sponsors began to desert, and Ken Tyrrell had to subsidise the team from his own pocket. Lack of funds meant Phillippe had to fall back on cloning rivals' more successful designs - the Lotus 79 for the Tyrrell 009 in 1979, and the Williams FW07 (itself influenced by the 79, but better sorted thanks to greater understanding of ground-effect) for the 010 in 1980.

When it entered service in the hands of Eddie Cheever at in round ten at Hockenheim in 1981, the 011 was an immediate step up over the old car: team-mate Michele Alboreto failed to qualify his 010 while Cheever raced to fifth

Here Phillippe ran into the same problems Lotus encountered when it tried to follow up the 79. Ground effect relied on inverted wing shapes within fully enclosed sidepods, sealed to the ground by sliding skirts, to create downforce - but these structures added weight to the car and put huge additional loads on the chassis. Engineers were naturally reticent to beef up the core structure of the car because this would incur an even greater weight penalty.

The 010 showed potential, but the chassis' lack of rigidity manifested itself in unpredictable handling and poor reliability. Jean-Pierre Jarier, Derek Daly and Eddie Cheever notched up eight points finishes between them in its 22-race service life, but there were plenty more retirements and failures to qualify.

Now operating on a shoestring again after a brief injection of Candy sponsorship for 1980, Phillippe took a belt-and-braces approach for the 011 (below), set against a background of almost continuous rule changes as the FIA unsuccessfully tried to legislate ground-effect aero out of existence.

If the 011 appears bulky in comparison with some of its rivals of the era, that's because Phillippe set out to draw the entire structure of the aluminium honeycomb chassis with no more than one fold on each side. That gave it a rather bluff frontal aspect, but to mitigate this and the potential weight gain Phillippe minimised the presence of cosmetic bodywork.

The entire side of the car between the cockpit and the sidepods is the central 'tub'. To minimise disruption of the airflow into the sidepods, the front suspension wishbones were neatly laid out above and below the opening; pullrod-actuated dampers here also kept the mass low.

The 1981 season unfolded rancorously as the FIA banned sliding skirts in a doomed attempt to eliminate ground-effect. While the better-resourced teams immediately tried to circumvent the ban with innovations such as Brabham's hydropneumatic bodywork (which enabled its cars to pass the ride-height test when entering or leaving the pitlane), the 011's minimal-bodywork concept militated against Tyrrell adopting such ideas.

Even so, when it entered service in the hands of Cheever at in round ten at Hockenheim, it was an immediate step up over the old car: team-mate Michele Alboreto failed to qualify his 010 while Cheever raced to fifth.

There would be no more points finishes that year but, in 1982, with sponsorship from Denim, there were funds for development - and, crucially, the FIA revoked the ban on sliding skirts. With the aero now working as intended, the 011 was now disadvantaged only by its naturally aspirated powertrain. That the team was still operating hand-to-mouth was evinced by Slim Borgudd, Cheever's replacement, being shown the door when his budget ran out ofter three races.

Alboreto finished 11 of the 16 races in 1982, of which seven were points finishes - including a podium in the San Marino Grand Prix in which Tyrrell raced despite its alignment to FOCA (Bernie Ecclestone's Formula One Constructors' Association), which was boycotting the event.

Eleven different drivers won races in 1982 and no one claimed more than two victories, for this was a turbulent season in which violent accidents killed Gilles Villeneuve and seriously injured Didier Pironi, both of whom would have been contenders for more wins and the championship.

At the final round, on the unloved temporary circuit in the car park of Caesar's Palace casino in Las Vegas, Alboreto contrived to qualify his 011 in third place behind the Renaults of Alain Prost and René Arnoux.

When engine failure prompted Arnoux to park his car on lap 20, Alboreto chased down and passed Prost - who was struggling with vibrations caused by his tyres picking up clods of spent rubber - and pulled clear to win by nearly half a minute. It would be the last grand prix victory for the venerable DFV engine in its original form.

Tyrrell secured Benetton sponsorship for 1983 but there was no competitive turbocharged powertrain available. Cosworth had long resisted turbocharging and its belated response to the obsolescence of the DFV was to sanction a much-revised naturally aspirated V8 designed by Mario Illien, who would later co-found Ilmor.

The DFY had the same swept volume but with a larger bore and shorter stroke, new Nikasil cylinder linings, a new cylinder head and an extremely narrow valve-opposed angle of 16 degrees. But its claimed improvement of 30bhp over the DFV was not enough.

Besides the new DFY engine, the 011 lost its sidepods for 1983 as the FIA rushed in a last-minute rule change mandating all cars to have flat bottoms. This had the unintended consequence of making F1 a power formula above all, and consigning those still running naturally aspirated engines to the tail of the field - for the most part.

Tyrrell laboured through the first six rounds with just one points finish, but in Detroit rain washed out Friday's running and the grid was decided by a one-hour session in drying conditions on Saturday. Alboreto qualified sixth with just one other unblown car - Marc Surer's Arrows-Ford - ahead of him.

By starting with a full tank of fuel and not making any pitstops, Alboreto was in prime position to take advantage when race leader Nelson Piquet suffered a puncture, and he took the chequered flag over seven seconds ahead of second-placed Keke Rosberg.

This would be the final win for the DFV family - and, indeed the last for a naturally aspirated engine until 1989. It was the last, too, for Tyrrell, though the team would soldier on as a diminished backmarker until 1998, when it was became BAR.

RACE RECORD
Starts: 64
Wins: 2
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 2
Other podiums: 1
Points: 38

SPECIFICATION
Chassis: Aluminium honeycomb monocoque
Suspension: Double wishbones, pullrod-actuated coil-over shock absorbers
Engine: Ford Cosworth DFV/DFY
Engine capacity: 2491cc
Power: 495bhp@11,000rpm (DFV), 520bhp@11,000rpm (DFY)
Gearbox: Five-speed manual
Tyres: Avon, Goodyear
Weight: 590kg
Notable drivers: Eddie Cheever, Michele Alboreto, Slim Borgudd, Brian Henton, Danny Sullivan