1977 Tyrrell Project 34

Our helmet visor snaps shut and now there is no choice. We are being waved out of the safety of the racing garage into the pit lane at the Silverstone circuit, where the Formula 1 cars race when they come to Britain every year.

Yes, we are very, very frightened, but it is important to understand why.

It's not that the 1977 Tyrrell P34 is a Formula 1 car with nearly 500 horsepower to propel just 1,100 pounds. No, what's making our knees shake is the fact that this car is exactly as it was the day it finished on the podium of the Japanese Grand Prix on October 23, 1977. It's been in a museum ever since and every single thing you can see apart from the suspension bits, wheels and tires has been untouched since that day.

Clearly there is a very real possibility of something breaking while we're driving. And there's one more thing unsettling our mind: The Tyrrell P34 just happens to have six wheels.

Six Wheels on Our Wagon
Two myths have been perpetuated about the Tyrrell-Ford P34 since it retired in 1977 after only its second season of racing. It's easy to dispel the first, as the car's legacy as an unsuccessful design is countered by the fact that in the 30 races the P34 contested for Team Tyrrell, it put one driver or another on the victory podium 14 times. In 1976 Tyrrell finished 3rd in the Constructors Championship.

The second myth is that the whole idea of six wheels came about from the attempt to improve the car's aerodynamics. True, but it had nothing to do with reducing frontal area and instead was meant to improve front downforce without a big drag-inducing front wing. Since four small tires produced less turbulent aerodynamic lift than two large ones, Tyrrell designer Derek Gardner reasoned that improved aero efficiency would provide an effective boost to speed, something hard to come by in that era when almost every car used the same Cosworth-Ford V8.

Finding Out the Hard Way
In practice, however, there were issues. First, the drivers could not see the front wheels and found the car difficult to place in the corners. Tire wear also was impossible to monitor, and since these tires were spinning twice as fast as conventional big tires, tire wear was on everyone's mind. A little porthole in the bodywork helped in this regard.

We savor the moment, watching those tiny front wheels bob up and down on their tiny wishbones.

More serious still was the difficulty in balancing the braking effect of the four front wheels. There was a lot of braking power, which was a good thing, but the effective wheelbase of the car changed depending on whether the front pair or rear pair of wheels locked up.

These days, former Tyrrell driver Jody Scheckter (the F1 champion in 1979 with the Ferrari 312T4) dismisses the car as "a piece of rubbish. I never agreed with the concept because as soon as one of the front wheels locked you had to lift off. It would have worked on smooth surfaces, but there weren't too many of those around back then." Perhaps this explains Scheckter's victory at the 1976 Grand Prix of Sweden, where the long, constant-radius corners of Anderstorp seemed to give the car an advantage (indeed teammate Patrick Depailler finished 2nd in the other Tyrrell P34).

A Moment of Truth
To get her running again, the P34's new owner has simply cleaned out the Cosworth-Ford DFV's fuel system, changed the oil and screwed in new spark plugs. Then his team plugged in a starter and hoped for the best. She fired up just fine. In fact judging from the noise, the pressures and temperatures, the motor seems in perfect health. Even so, we're mindful that its youngest component is a minimum of 33 years old, so we're not going to seek the 10,500 rpm it would have pulled in its day.

It feels so odd. Our feet are ahead of the front axle line as expected, but the second set of wheels appears to be almost next to us, clearly visible through my little porthole.

The P34 is not inherently difficult to drive because it followed conventional thinking of the era — aside from the front wheels, of course. The cockpit is surprisingly spacious, as it would need to be to accommodate the lanky Ronnie Peterson, the driver who led the Tyrrell team in 1977. A stubby shift lever to our right controls the straight-cut gears of the Hewland dog-ring gearbox.

This Cosworth is surprisingly tractable even at 4,000 rpm and gives good power above 6,000 rpm. The DFV gives this car a power-to-weight ratio that's approximately twice as good as a Bugatti Veyron, so the P34 accelerates like no road car in history. Step on it in 4th gear and Silverstone's grandstands blur into a single smudge of color while the ribbon of road spools out in front of you.

The light-action gearbox is as precise as if it had been engineered last week and you can almost flick it between ratios with your index fingers. The gear ratios are short and close, so we reach maximum permissible revs in 5th gear almost at once. We just hang there, savoring the moment and watching those tiny front wheels bob up and down on their tiny wishbones, scarcely believing we're driving the six-wheeled Tyrrell.

What we never get used to in this all-too-brief encounter with the P34 is the immediacy of its reactions, as every twitch of the steering provokes an instant and extreme response from the car. At times the simple process of merely thinking where you'd like to position the car seems enough to move it there. There is wonderful footage of driver Patrick Depailler punting this actual car around places like Monaco and Kyalami as if it were a go-kart.

The Noble Experiment
Just as tires helped invent the Project 34, so too did tires lead to the experiment's demise. Tire development was racing ahead at the time, and while Goodyear had enough money to build a few tires for the P34 in 1976, most of its F1 resources were devoted to the battle between the McLaren and Ferrari teams. Just as with the 1968 AVS-Shadow Can-Am car, there was not enough interest in 10-inch tires to justify further experimentation. The P34s had a few good races, but Scheckter's victory in 1976 would not be repeated. The 1978 Tyrrell 008 was conventional and never again did Tyrrell seem like a racing team at the leading edge of technology.

Our drive around Silverstone in the ex-Patrick Depailler P34 from the 1976 and 1977 seasons is the last time the car will ever run in original form. Now it will be subject to a painstaking restoration lasting a year or more, bringing it back to the point where it can be raced again. With Avon now promising to produce front tires as good as the rears, perhaps the full potential of the 1977 Tyrrell P34 will be realized at last.

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