Thursday 24th August 2023

Tyrrell: The Story of the Tyrrell Racing Organisation Book review by Peter Baker

Why anybody should want to run a race team I have no idea. Except no other occupation, except perhaps three-card brag, can give you so many highs, and lows, compressed into such a short space of time. Up one minute, down the next. A dozen second places, that nobody remembers, equals one win. Maybe. But ask, and they all say the same thing: ‘Given the chance, I’d do it all over again’.

Team managers are no more than addicts. Ken Tyrrell was an addict. He should have packed it in after Jackie Stewart announced his retirement in April 1973. But he didn’t. That year the high was; Stewart won his third World Championship. While at Tyrrell, the low; Francois Cevert, Stewart’s replacement and everybody’s friend, including Ken’s, died in a horrific crash.

In this comprehensive, near 500-page recognition, author Richard Jenkins has left nothing out. Ken the racing driver. Ken the entrepreneur. Ken the lumberjack. It’s all here, from his first race win as a driver in 1953, to his death from cancer on 25 August 2001. Sir Frank William’s personal tribute included the following: “You can image Ken standing by his bed every night in Union Jack pyjamas, singing God Save The Queen.”

I bet you 10 to one it was true.

Retro-Speed Magazine awards this five stars.

Tyrrell: The Story of the Tyrrell Racing Organisation
Written by Richard Jenkins with foreword by Sir Jackie Stewart OBE
ISBN 978-1-910505-6-0
Published by Evro Publishing
Price £90.00