APRIL 13, 1998

Synge heads Tyrrell test team

THE Tyrrell/British American Racing test team is to be run by former Formula 3000 team owner Robert Synge, who made his name running various Madgwick Motorsport teams. Madgwick began successfully in the junior formulae in Britain in the early 1980s and won the 1986 British Formula 3 series with Andy Wallace at the wheel of the first Reynard F3 car. The team went on to Formula 3000 and in 1988 Synge even tried to put together a Formula 1 program. This failed and the team became a regular competitor in Formula 3000. In 1990 Pedro Chaves won the undersubscribed British F3000 title for Madgwick which then began a relationship with Nigel Mansell. That autumn Andrew Gilbert Scott tested a Madgwick F3000 car fitted with prototype parts for a Reynard F1 car. The Reynard project was cancelled and the following season Madgwick driver Paul Warwick was killed in a crash at Oulton Park in July. Warwick was so far ahead in the British F3000 Championship that he would become posthumous champion. Thereafter the team struggled in F3000 and it was not until the end of 1995 that Kenny Brack gave the team its first and only win in International Formula 3000 at Magny-Cours. At the end of 1996 Madgwick ran out of money and withdrew from the series.

Synge's job will be to get a two-car test team up and running at Tyrrell and as prototype parts for the BAR Reynard begin to arrive these will be run on the cars. Eventually - probably in December - the test team will begin running the BAR Reynard prototype chassis.