Paul Stewart – Tyrrell 003

I mean looking at it from a generational aspect and selfishly too because I own it, it has to be Tyrrell 003 designed by Derek Gardner, which won eight grand prix. It doesn’t matter how often I look at it there is always something that catches my eye afresh and from whatever angle I look at it. It always looks so beautiful. In a way, it’s pure art. It was build and hand crafted at the woodshed in Ken Tyrrell’s wood yard and you cannot help but admire the craft and expertise of the panel beater who took the metal and from a drawing bought something like this to life. The car is not only beautiful, but was enormously successful on the track too winning the world championship for my father. From my point of view too there are tremendous memories wrapped within the car. I have to say though, it is a car I wouldn’t have like to have raced. My racing era had cars with deformable structures made to take impact should it need too. No, I definitely couldn’t see me racing it. Another car, again from that era, but slightly earlier is the Gold Leaf Lotus 49 – again, simply beautiful.

Surprisingly, many would feel I’d pick the car from my own time in Formula One as joint team owner, with my father, of Stewart Grand Prix. Yes, it was a fantastic period, but much different to the late sixties and early 1970’s period of the cars I’ve mentioned. We had some tremendous times and most of them charged with emotion – especially when Rubens took second place at the 1997 Monaco GP in SF01, in just our 5^th race we were on the podium – Monte Carlo too, the jewel of grand prix racing. However, the prettiest of our cars, in my humble opinion, was SF03, it looked right, it looked quick and it won our first grand prix in the hands of Johnny Herbert at the European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, Germany. To be very honest, although we won our first grand prix with that car there wasn’t as much emotion as there was for our first podium. I think at Monaco there was a tremendous release of pressure and tension which had built up over the formative months of the team and then the running those initial races.