Building a Formula 1 car in your own shed? It’s a romantic notion, the stuff of daydreams for many of us. But for the late Ken Tyrrell, there was nothing whimsical about such a homegrown approach.
As one of the greatest and most fiercely independent team patrons, he oversaw the creation of grand prix- and world championship-winning Formula 1 cars from just such a humble abode in his family-run timberyard in Ockham, Surrey, for years. And why not?
What more did one need back in the 1960s and 1970s? Today and just down the road sits the fantastical McLaren Technology Centre. The F1 that Tyrrell first knew and thrived in half a century ago might as well have existed in another world.
Tyrrell’s humble hub of innovation remains the most famous shed in motorsport and now, happily, following a threat of demolition, has been saved and preserved for cherished posterity at a perfect new location: the Goodwood Motor Circuit in West Sussex, where much of the Tyrrell Racing Organisation’s early history was written.
It was here where Sir Jackie Stewart first tested a Tyrrell-run Cooper Formula Junior car, stunning ‘Chopper’ with his pace and kindling one of the great motor racing partnerships that garnered three world championships in the space of just five years. All masterminded from that shed, which as of very recently sits proudly on a plot behind the Woodcote grandstand.
Predictably, it proved a hugely popular draw for visitors to the 81st Goodwood Members’ Meeting.
“It’s one of those great – and true – British motorsport stories,” said Sam Medcraft, the circuit’s general manager, who oversaw this wonderfully eccentric relocation to a site “more or less where an accommodation hut was in use here during the war”.
That’s fitting, because Tyrrell sourced what became his F1 ‘factory’ from the Women’s Royal Army Corps to serve as his nascent team’s workshop as he began the transition from (not very successful) racing driver to team owner at the turn of the 1960s.
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