The 025 was an evolution of the previous year's 024, with the primary change being a switch from Yamaha V10 engines to Ford V8 units. The motivation was reliability: the Yamaha had been chronically fragile in 1996, and the Ford offered greater dependability. The trade-off was a reduction in outright power compared with the V10 cars further up the grid.
Tyrrell continued its tradition of technical innovation with the 025. The team moved away from a double-support front wing to a single-plane design intended to clean up the airflow beneath the car. On high-downforce circuits such as Monaco, additional wings were mounted on either side of the cockpit — a configuration that became one of the most recognisable visual signatures of the 1997 season. To distinguish the two cars, Verstappen's cockpit wings were painted yellow and Salo's dark orange. These so-called X-wings were subsequently banned during the 1998 season after the FIA raised safety concerns about them in the pitlane, by which point several other teams had adopted similar arrangements.
The season proved largely disappointing overall. The chassis was considered well-balanced and the drivers competitive, but the increased pace of midfield rivals meant Tyrrell spent much of the year fighting Minardi — the only other team running a Ford V8 — for position, rather than making inroads on the established teams ahead.
The team's two championship points came at the 1997 Monaco Grand Prix, where Salo ran a non-stop strategy and finished fifth despite carrying damage to his front wing. The result stood as Tyrrell's final points score in Formula One. Verstappen, who had joined from Footwork, showed pace at various points but could not convert it into points finishes.
At the close of 1997, Ken Tyrrell sold the team to British American Tobacco, which rebranded it as British American Racing for the 1999 season with an entirely fresh entry. Paul Stoddart, who would later become owner of Minardi, had come close to purchasing the team himself and had offered Tyrrell a three-year overhaul plan involving an in-house wind tunnel and the use of his European Aviation company for logistics, but the deal with BAT had already been concluded by the time Stoddart's offer was fully formed.
The team finished tenth in the Constructors' Championship with two points, its final tally in Formula One.
The 025 ran in a white and black livery, reflecting the team's new title sponsor PIAA, a Japanese manufacturer of automotive lighting and accessories that had also backed Tyrrell in 1991. Additional branding included NRG Energy Drink across the top of the rear wing panels, and at the British Grand Prix the team carried promotion for the television series Xena: Warrior Princess.