The incredible story of F1's only six-wheeled winner

Forty-three years after it first raced, the Tyrrell P34 remains one of the most iconic cars in Formula 1's history. That's an impressive achievement given that it scored just a single grand prix victory in Sweden during its two-year lifespan.

The six-wheeler was perhaps the definitive symbol of an era when every car looked different and, unlike today, the rules were not restrictive. Designers were free to use their imaginations and one person could still be responsible for creating an entire car.

If that person was lucky, they might have some access to a university-owned 25% windtunnel for a spot of basic research, but still much depended on that individual's intuition and instinct.

Project 34 captured the imagination of a generation of fans, helped by its afterlife as a Corgi diecast model, Scalextric racer and Tamiya kit. On a visit to the 1976 Race of Champions, aged 10, I bought a Project 34 T-shirt - and this was before the car itself had even raced.

Many years later I acquired a stash of bodywork, including a nose and the actual cockpit surround - including trademark Perspex windows - used in its sole race victory.

It was during the 1975 season that Tyrrell designer Derek Gardner came up with the concept of having four small wheels at the front.

The 007 that the Surrey team was racing at the time was a decent contender, capable of winning the odd race, and it had even kept Jody Scheckter in title contention until the end of the 1974 season. But Ken Tyrrell was searching for an advantage, something that would separate his team from the rest of the Cosworth-engined crowd and allow it to take on Ferrari's flat-12.

Tyrrell already had an eye on the fledgling Renault turbo project, hoping that his Elf links would give him an in. And he wasn't the only team boss with such thoughts. Shadow flirted with Matra power, while Bernie Ecclestone signed an Alfa Romeo deal for Brabham for 1976.

But with no trick engine deal on the immediate horizon, Tyrrell gave Gardner full rein and allowed him to start work on his groundbreaking six-wheel design. Initially only a handful of team members knew about it.

"In 1975 there was a secret project going on in one of the timber yard sheds," recalls ace mechanic and fabricator Neil Trundle. "And none of us knew what it was. It was being done by the fibreglass guys, and what they were doing was a mock-up.

"I wandered over one day to see them, and they had inadvertently left the covers off this bodywork they'd been doing. I asked, 'What is it?' They said, 'We're not supposed to tell you, but it's a six-wheeler'.

"They did it secretly, they didn't tell us about it until it was nearly ready to launch. I just wanted to understand how and why?" Jody Scheckter

"So I went to Ken and said, 'You are obviously doing a project, and the word is going to get out - you cannot keep this a secret. I would say let's talk to the guys'. He said, 'Good idea'.

"So he got all the guys together and he said, 'We're doing this project, very exciting, it's Derek's idea and it will be the best-kept secret in motor racing. But we've got to keep the lid on it'.

"We carried on, but it nearly leaked out because Jack Knight were making the mini front wheels for us, from castings. Anyway, we managed to keep that one quiet!

"Towards the end of 1975 we had to build a chassis. So myself and Peter Turland cut the front end off a 007 at the dash bulkhead and then we grafted on the front of the six-wheeler, all fabricated sheet metal. That was the P34 prototype.

"I worked day and night putting the thing together, then we launched it in London at a hotel. We mocked up the front with cardboard wheels, so it looked like a four-wheeler, and it had a cover over it. All the press were there. Then we dragged the cover off and of course there was shock and surprise. And it was the best-kept secret!"

Even drivers Scheckter and Patrick Depailler only found out at a late stage.

"They did it secretly, they didn't tell us about it until it was nearly ready to launch," Scheckter recalls. "I just wanted to understand how and why? As I remember, Derek Gardner said there's less frontal area and it will brake better. I didn't understand why that was the case."

The car would get its first mileage at Silverstone in late 1975, before more extensive running at Paul Ricard.

"I was the first person ever to drive it!" says Trundle. "It was up and down the Club straight at Silverstone, doing all the brake testing. It was just me and a bunch of mechanics.

"Then we started testing it properly, and in truth Jody wasn't a very great enthusiast for the car. Depailler was either way. But we wanted to run it, because it was so exciting. We went testing with it at Paul Ricard and did a back-to-back with 007."

Scheckter had some interesting experiences when he first drove the car.

"We went to Paul Ricard and we ran the old car against the six-wheeler," he says. "And the six-wheeler was quicker on the straight. However, the wheels were closer together at the back - a narrower track - and I think they played a little bit with the wing. So the comparison was not valid.

"Braking was fine when you were on a straight road and braking straight, but as soon as you started turning in one of the little wheels jumped up and you had to take your foot off the brake, otherwise you were going to flat-spot the tyre.

"That's the conclusion I had. You didn't have anti-lock brakes in those days, so it happened as soon as one of the wheels lifted off. Was the roll bar too stiff on one and not the other? I don't know, I can't remember, we're getting too technical now!"

As Trundle suggests, Depailler was more supportive of the concept.

"He was a lovely guy," Scheckter says of his team-mate. "We'd be quite quick in the first practice and we'd come in and he would say, 'The car is fantastic'.

"The next session we'd be doing the same times but be slower than other people and the car was 'shit!' He went quite quickly - I think he was quicker than me in Monaco and a few other places."

The P34 made its debut at the fourth race of the 1976 season at Jarama. There was just one car for Depailler, who qualified an impressive third only for his race to end with a spin after he hit brake problems.

"It had a different nose by then," says Trundle. "Actually the prototype nose I thought was better and had more downforce, but they changed it.

"The car had cast magnesium front uprights, and the brake calliper was machined in the upright. Of course it used to get so hot that the bearings used to come loose, so that was one of its inherent problems. But they kind of got round it."

Next time out at Zolder, Scheckter took a solid fourth on his first appearance with the P34. Then in Monaco the dark blue machines finished second and third, beaten only by Niki Lauda's Ferrari. By now people were really taking notice.

"It was a fun car to drive," says Scheckter. "Looking at the results, I did better than I remember doing. It was very, very controllable. I explain it as a long wheelbase and a short wheelbase in one, you could nearly put it sideways on the straight and be totally in control of it.

"But it broke a lot. The front suspension unit, you had to do the cambers after every practice because the whole thing was bending or flexing."

"It was really one of the most dangerous cars on the track, there was nothing to it at the front" Neil Trundle

In Sweden Scheckter unexpectedly found himself with a five-wheeler, but he was at least able to motor safely back to the pits: "A wheel fell off in practice. Derek sat down next to me and said, 'What is it like?', and I said, 'Well it's got a bit of understeer', and then they started laughing and put blankets over the car and pushed it away."

Anderstorp was to prove the highlight of the P34's racing career. Scheckter and Depailler had finished one-two at the track in 1974 with the 007, and they repeated that result after Mario Andretti retired his Lotus with an engine failure.

"For some reason Tyrrell went really well in Sweden - I won twice there," says Scheckter, who started from pole. "Why, I don't know. For me it must have been the rear geometry."

As the McLaren versus Ferrari battle raged, Tyrrell continued to pick up good results. But Scheckter had his doubts about the car and a huge crash in Austria didn't help his confidence.

"Something broke on the front suspension. It was a big one, I was lucky. It was the only time that I was injured. A bolt hit my leg, and it was bleeding a little bit, but that was no big deal. I remember that car breaking and moving around all the time. It was usually the rear suspension.

"I came to the factory in England once and said, 'I can't drive the car anymore, it's just breaking'. When I went to Zandvoort I was worried that the car would break. You're sitting there, cringing. If something broke around the back [where Piers Courage and Roger Williamson had fatal accidents in 1970 and 1973] you might not come out of it."

"It was really one of the most dangerous cars on the track, there was nothing to it at the front," Trundle concedes. "In Austria Jody had a front wishbone fail and he sailed off, hit the barrier and went down the track.

"The wishbone went through the tub and poked a hole in his leg. It could have been a whole lot worse. I think the chassis, after a few races, lost all their stiffness. They delaminated, the glues would come apart and we'd have to reinforce and re-glue and re-rivet."

After the Swedish success the drivers shared six second places in the remaining nine races and the team eventually finished third in the constructors' championship.

"It only had one win, which was Sweden, when they were first and second," says Trundle. "But it had lots of second places and was very competitive.

"At Brands, if they hadn't restarted the race we would have been looking good, because with Lauda and [James] Hunt going out, Jody and Patrick were up near the front. It went well at Monaco too. At the last race at Fuji Depailler led with a few laps to go, but he ran out of front tyres."

Despite the promise shown by the car, Scheckter opted to join Walter Wolf for 1977. "I got on really well with Derek. He was a proper gentleman, but I didn't agree with the logic behind the six-wheeler. And they started listening to Patrick more than me, and that was probably my motivation for leaving to go to Wolf."

Meanwhile, Tyrrell's hopes of securing the new Renault turbo engine came to nothing, with the French manufacturer eventually deciding to field its own entry.

"Elf was pushing Renault to release an engine to us," says Trundle. "The guys on the team weren't very keen at all. I went down to a Renault test and I was like a leper - they just didn't want me there!

"That was the end of '76 I think. I remember Jean-Pierre Jabouille was driving their test car and I was making notes, but they didn't really want me there. The hierarchy knew, because they'd spoken to Ken.

"We did mock-ups, I had a mock-up engine, and Derek was thinking out of the box again. He was going to turn the engine around and drive it from the front, and all kinds of weird ideas. But that's when you could produce any car you wanted."

Scheckter was replaced by Ronnie Peterson, but in its second year the P34 lacked performance. The team lost its way as it tried different cooling solutions and experimented with a wider front track. Nothing seemed to help.

"At the end of 1976 I left and went back to Ron Dennis and Project 4," says Trundle. "Jody went on to Wolf and Ronnie came on board. By then Goodyear had dropped the development of the front tyres, and the front tyres were where it was lacking in 1977.

"They stiffened up the front of the chassis, put a big magnesium plate on the top and went wide-track at the front. They put a Ferrari-type cockpit on with an air intake for the engine at the front. That didn't really work and it went downhill."

By the end of 1977 Gardner had left Tyrrell and indeed F1 - the P34 was to be his last car. For 1978 his replacement, Maurice Philippe, produced a standard four-wheel machine, the 008. March and Williams would experiment with four wheels at the rear, but neither car raced and ultimately a ban put an end to the six-wheel concept.

The P34 lives on in historic racing. Pierluigi Martini became so enamoured of the car as a teenage fan that, after a long career as an F1 driver, he bought and restored an example.

Scheckter also owns one, which he regularly demonstrates at the Car Fest event held on his Hampshire farm.

"As I understand it, it was bits and pieces from one of the cars I drove that was written off. It went to America. I tried to buy the bits, the guy wouldn't sell it, then he built it up, wanted to sell it, and I bought it.

"It doesn't fit me properly, but it's quite nice. But we're doing half laps on cold tyres on dusty roads, so it's not really ideal!"