Rock-and-roll Eddie Jordan gave Schumacher his debut – and his flamboyance captivated F1’s paddock
Tribute: Popular former F1 team owner Jordan has passed away at the age of 76 after a battle with cancer
An old-school Irishman of quick wit and vibrancy, Eddie Jordan was a Formula One figure whose influence touched every corner of motorsport’s most-famed paddock throughout a career in the sport lasting over 30 years.
From a promising race driver and savvy team owner to a captivating broadcaster and erudite manager, Jordan’s sad passing at the age of 76 on Thursday, after a year-long battle with cancer, has sent shockwaves through a sport now in its pomp.
F1 has not always been in such good stead, though. It has needed influencers and trendsetters: those willing to put their neck (and more importantly, their finances) on the line for a shot at victory, and to give desperate drivers a chance in the cockpit. Jordan was certainly one of those.
Born in Dublin in 1948, Jordan was given the nickname “Flash” in his childhood, owing to his surname rhyming with the name and superhero Gordon. No flash-in-the-pan though, he dismissed the route of becoming a priest at the age of 15 and family pressure to enter dentistry. Instead, he took a six-week accountancy course and began working at the Bank of Ireland – a job which gave him his first insight into the art of negotiation.
Yet as the 1970s decade began, Jordan opted for pastures new. He began karting and won the 1971 Irish Kart Championships before moving through the ranks in Formula Ford and Formula Two. He was quick, but not quick enough, and soon founded his own junior team – in which he handed drives to the likes of Martin Brundle and Johnny Herbert.
But his most significant driver deal – not that he was to know it at the time – came right at the beginning of his 14-year career as an F1 team owner.
In need of a driver at the 1991 Belgian Grand Prix after Bertrand Gachot was sent to prison for attacking a taxi driver, Jordan agreed a deal to sign a promising young German driver, who was part of Mercedes’s sportscar programme.
His name was Michael Schumacher.
“First, he lied to me – I had asked him if he had ever been to Spa,” Jordan said, of giving Schumacher his debut.
“I meant, of course, if he had driven there before. He simply said ‘yes’. Okay, he wasn’t cheating, but he had never raced there. If I had known that, I wouldn’t have let him drive.
“In my opinion, it was impossible to get to know the most difficult track and a new car in one weekend. His seventh place on the grid was therefore exceptional. His experienced teammate [Andrea] de Cesaris, who wasn’t exactly considered slow on the scene, didn’t stand a chance. Seventh place was like pole position for us.”
While Schumacher had to retire from the race due to a clutch issue, a star had been born. Jordan had an agreement to retain Schumacher for the rest of the season but enigmatic Italian Flavio Briatore swooped, snatching the German driver for Benetton – where he would go on to win the first two of seven world titles.
“Welcome to the piranha club,” McLaren boss Ron Dennis told Jordan after Briatore’s move. To this day, it is a phrase synonymous with the no-holds-barred deadlings of the F1 paddock.
Nonetheless, Jordan enjoyed plenty of success over 250 races as a team boss until a cash shortfall led to selling up in 2005. The highlight was a one-two finish, back at Spa, in 1998 with Damon Hill taking the chequered flag. Embarrassingly, the Irish national anthem was not played on the podium as the FIA could not find a copy of it in time; fortunately, the cock-up was remedied a year later at the French GP.
The final year of the century saw Jordan at its peak: they achieved their highest finish of third in the constructors’ world championship, with their driver Heinz-Harald Frentzen finishing third as well in the drivers’ standings.
But as a new century dawned, that was as good as it got. Giancarlo Fisichella claimed the team’s final win in Brazil in 2003 before Jordan sold his team to Midland Group for $60m. That team, after a number of name changes, is now Aston Martin. In a full circle moment, Jordan last year toured Aston’s new £200m Silverstone factory where his team was based 20 years earlier, as he brokered Adrian Newey’s lucrative move to the team from Red Bull.
A larger-than-life, cheeky and often sassy figure, away from racing Jordan had a softer, heartfelt side. The Irishman was a patron of CLIC Sargent, the UK’s leading cancer charity, and raised millions of pounds alongside wife Marie. He received an OBE in 2012 for services to charity and motor racing and in 2021, received the Freedom of the City of London.
His final years in the paddock were still played out in front of the cameras. Alongside presenter Jake Humphrey and ex-F1 driver David Coulthard, his flamboyant punditry style enraptured him to F1 fans in the UK watching the BBC’s free-to-air coverage at the end of the noughties.
His knack for a scoop, with his never-ending list of contacts, made him a huge asset; indeed, he predicted Schumacher’s return to Mercedes in 2010 and Lewis Hamilton’s move to the same team in 2013. His ostentatiousness made him a marmite figure with F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, though the pair always had an affable relationship.
Yet Jordan continued to exert his powerful thoughts and messaging right up to his sad death in Cape Town on Thursday morning. Only last month, when discussing leading a consortium to buy London Irish rugby club out of administration, he became emotional on talkSPORT talking about his chemotherapy. Previously, he urged people to get screened for cancer early.
“This is a little message to everybody listening to this, don’t waste or put it off,” he said. “Go and get tested, because in life you have got chances. Go and do it.
“Don’t be stupid. Don’t be shy. Look after your body, guys.”
That was what “EJ”, who also played the drums in a band called Eddie and the Robbers and performed on-stage at Silverstone, was all about. His words struck a chord with a whole range of people from all walks of life.
“I was ridiculously serious, but I had this facade, I had this character that needed to be played out,” Jordan told Gentleman’s Journal in 2020.
“I was the Irish joker, I was jack the lad. And I hoped they wouldn’t take me too seriously. It was a really wonderful game. And they never twigged how serious we actually were.”
A master of persuasion and charm, who rose from nothing to walk the walk within F1’s higher circles, he will be sorely missed and tributes will be keenly felt this weekend at the Chinese Grand Prix.
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