The back-bedroom world-beater that began a new F1 era

The first in a line of world beaters was designed in a back bedroom and then constructed in a shed. STUART CODLING recalls the Tyrrell 001

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 that 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.