Formula one. Season 1971. Review

The second year of the decade saw Ken Tyrrell's team re-establish their supremacy with Jackie Stewart winning the Drivers' title for the second time by a large margin. Although the usual end-of-season rumours had earlier suggested that Stewart would defect to Ferrari, tempted by their powerful flat-12 engine, he remained loyal to his friend and soon confirmed that he would stay with the Derek Gardner-designed and Tyrrell-built cars, powered by Ford's Cosworth engine. This V8 DFV engine had dominated F1 grids since first appearing in 1967 and subsequently powered as many as 44 of those entries gaining points in the Drivers' Championships in the intervening years - an incredible achievement.
Aerodynamics was now beginning to become an important factor in car design. The French Matra firm was the first to use a large dynamic air intake above the driver's head. This was almost universally copied but in many cases it seemingly made little difference. However, the main preoccupation of most teams concerned the use of aerofoil surfaces fore and aft, as far as was allowed by the regulations. The wedge-shaped Lotus 72, where the radiators flanked the engine, had really set the ball rolling when it powered Jochen Rindt to the 1970 Drivers' Championship.
Ron Tauranac then produced the Brabham BT34 with the radiator split in two and partly shielding the front wheels. Unfortunately, during 1971 it failed to show superiority over the earlier BT33, which continued in use throughout the season as the team's second car.
Attention to the aerodynamics certainly paid off in the case of the Tyrrell which, from the French GP, was fitted with an aerofoil-shaped fairing to shield the front wheels. Ken Tyrrell himself reported that it was this which made his cars' top speed as fast as the Ferrari. As Stewart had refused to have inboard front brakes for reasons of safety, an unorthodox feature on the Tyrrell was a twin-disc brake developed by Girling. This gave promising results towards preserving the full efficiency of the brakes under poor cooling conditions, caused by their being shrouded by the cars' ultra-wide wheels of only 13in diameter.
Although Dunlop had dropped out of the tyre war at the end of 1970, competition between Firestone and Goodyear was as keen as ever. Improvements in rubber-mix had resulted in the introduction of slicks, with their completely smooth tread surface providing even better contact with the road. The wide track of the cars by 1971 was required to keep the flat-sectioned tyres as near vertical as possible.
Safety was little improved and it was the BRM team which suffered the most agony. Firstly they lost Pedro Rodriguez who was killed driving a Ferrari in a sports car race at the Norisring in Germany. His team-mate Jo Siffert then perished during the Victory Race at Brands Hatch in October, a non-championship F1 event promoted to mark Jackie Stewart's second World Championship win. BRM was never the same again.