Tyrrell 008 and Thunderbird 2

Patrick Depailler at the entry to Mirabeau Bas, Monaco 1978

Perhaps unexpectedly, the 1978 Tyrrell 008 shares an aerodynamic concept with Thunderbird 2: they both employ forward-swept wings.

The conventional wisdom on such wings is that they induce a span-wise component to the wing-flow, directed towards the roots of the wing. This has two consequences:

(i) The strength of the wing-tip vortices is reduced, decreasing vortex-drag.

(ii) Yaw instability is increased. As the vehicle begins to yaw, the effective forward-sweep is increased on the outer-wing, and the effective sweep is reduced on the inner wing. The further reduces the drag on the outer wing, and increases the drag on the inner wing, and this differential drag creates a torque which further increases the yaw angle.

So perhaps the Tyrrell 008 front-wing was designed to improve turn-in response.

Detailed information on the aerodynamic performance of Thunderbird 2 appears to have been lost when Century 21 Productions closed its studio on the Slough Trading Estate in late 1970.