Maverick Eddie Jordan was cowboy who brought rock’n’roll to F1, made Katie Price a star and gave Schumacher his debut
EDDIE JORDAN was the Irish underdog who brought rock’n’roll energy to Formula One – and helped make Katie Price a star.The former team owner, who has died aged 76, draped the then 20-year-old glamour model over his trademark yellow cars at racetracks in his Nineties heyday.Eddie Jordan, pictured here with Katie ‘Jordan’ Price, was a true F1 rock starCredit: GettyJordan handed big breaks to a number of drivers in F1 including Michael SchumacherCredit: Getty’Eddie Mania’ was in full swing during the 1990sCredit: PA:Press AssociationJordan’s record of giving rookies their big break was second to noneCredit: AP:Associated PressWith glamour girl Jodie MarshCredit: ReutersIt gave The Sun’s Page 3 girl her first taste of global attention – and made everyone remember her alias, “Jordan”.At the time, the Jordan Formula One team was by far the most exciting name in racing thanks to Eddie’s trailblazing sense of fun.As well as making so-called “pit babes” part of the action, he painted menacing snakes on the noses of his racing cars and organised rock concerts after races, with himself on drums.While other teams seemed to care mainly about technical specs, he was all about passion, and his motormouth enthusiasm made that passion infectious.READ MORE ON EDDIE JORDANThe scrappy former Dublin street-trader also captured imaginations with his swashbuckling sponsorship deals – including one when he managed to convince delivery firm DHL to repaint their entire international fleet of white vans and planes with his famous “Jordan Yellow”.Eddie once recalled: “We were like cowboys in the Wild West, chasing around finding money.”He was also famous for what even back in 1990 was described as an “uncanny ability to spot young drivers and maximise their potential”.Those he gave big breaks to included Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher, others to drive for him included world champion Damon Hill, Eddie Irvine, Rubens Barichello, Ralf Schumacher, Jean Alesi, Martin Rundle, Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Rubens Barichello.Most read in MotorsportBut top drivers always ended up getting lured away to richer and more corporate teams, backed by huge car makers such as Ferrari and McLaren.Maverick Eddie ended up being the last independent owner in the sport.Brave Eddie Jordan’s final public appearance just weeks before his deathHe finally sold up in 2005, becoming a TV racing pundit and presenting Top Gear alongside Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc from 2016.Meanwhile the father of four threw his deal-making energy into the business world, including owning chunks of Celtic FC, Jazz FM and posh people’s bible Debrett’s.According to the Sunday Times Rich List, by 2020 he was worth £85million.But despite his success Eddie once admitted: “I want people to think I’m a bit of an Irish eejit.“I don’t want people to know whether I’m clever or not. I like them to think I just got lucky.”Edmund Patrick Jordan was born in Dublin on March 30, 1948, and first began wheeler-dealing in the playground with conkers: “I would be buying and selling constantly.”After a brief attempt at studying to be a dentist, he ditched university in 1967 to work as a bank teller.He bragged in 2004: “I was by far the best person at opening new accounts.”When a strike closed Dublin banks in 1970 he headed to work in Jersey where one Sunday he had a go in a go-kart at a local track.He wrote in his 2008 autobiography: “I had no idea that this sort of exhilaration existed.”The following year he won the Irish Kart Championship.Then in 1972, aged 24, came a crash that left him with an infected fracture that hit his nervous system and caused alopecia. Jordan was worth around £85m according to the Sunday Times Rich List in 2020Credit: PAJordan started out as a bank tellerCredit: GettyHe eventually fell in love with racing in 2008Credit: GettyJordan married Marie in 1983Credit: News Group Newspapers LtdFor the rest of his life he covered up his total baldness with wigs: he had three in different lengths that he wore on rotation.He then moved into car-racing, starting with the Formula Ford competition, then Formula 3 and Formula Atlantic.And to fund it all, in his own words: “I was always a hustler.”That included flogging smoked salmon on Dublin’s streets, dressed in chef’s whites and standing under a sign designed to make the cut-rate fish look high-end: “Saumon fumé ici”.Meanwhile he did “brisk business” selling used cars from the car park of the bank where he still worked.He won the Irish Formula Atlantic Championship in 1978 and tested for McLaren’s F1 team but later admitted: “I was a little accident prone.”So in 1979 he moved to Britain and founded his team, Eddie Jordan Racing, letting other F3 drivers including, briefly, Ayrton Senna, take the wheel while he wrangled fees and sponsorship deals.By this time he had just married Marie McCarthy, a former Irish basketball international and his “absolute rock” for the rest of his life.He said he had first fallen for her because she was a “jeans and bacon butties” kind of girl.And to his amazement when, after his team had aced both the F3 and Formula 3000 competitions, she supported him when he told her in 1990 that he wanted to move into F1.By then, they had four children and £5m in the bank, largely from managing drivers’ careers.He wanted to spend it all on the high-risk venture and recalled: “I talked to Marie about it and she said, ‘You’ll never be happy until you do it. Let’s get on with it.”Jake Humphrey’s heartfelt tributeUtterly devastated.EJ has left us.Formula One won’t see the likes of Eddie ever again where a guy with a love for racing can hustle his way into the sport and end up winning races.More important than race wins though, he won hearts. I will never forget how his face would always light up whenever he saw a Jordan GP jacket, flag or cap… as we traveled the world together years after the team had been sold.His greatest achievements were Mikki, Zoe, Kyle and Zak. His incredible 4 kids who share his spirit. His wife Marie is one of the strongest, most wonderful women I have ever met.The 4 years we spent together hosting F1 on the BBC were greatest of my career. Wing-walking, scooter riding, car driving madness that I know he loved deeply.His incredible spirit and love of life lives on in me, and my children who were lucky enough to meet him and hear all about him.Eddie lit up a room whenever he entered it. That is a lesson for us all – be the light in the room.I was lucky enough to share one, final, cherished meal with him and his boys a few months ago. It was special. We talked about me doing one last interview with him. Sadly that will never happen.As I left his departing words were ‘I love you brother’.I love you. Brother.One of the 3 Amigos is gone. The world seems a little less bright this morning.Farewell friend. Play the spoons up there for meSo he renamed his team Jordan Grand Prix and gathered a crack design group that on a tiny budget built what is still regarded as one of F1’s most beautiful cars of all time: the Jordan 191.That first racing year, 1991, the team colour was green, after he “browbeat” a sponsorship deal out of 7UP then ran around signing up other sponsors associated with the same colour: Fujifilm and, famously, the country of Ireland.The Irish government coughed up £1m when he claimed he had painted the car green because “I felt so strongly about this being the first ever Irish F1 team”.Thanks to this, Eddie was an instant cult hero in his homeland; the rest of the world took notice when underdogs managed to keep up with and sometimes beat the big-name teams.Most spectacularly, in that first season he gave a young Michael Schumacher his F1 debut at the Belgian Grand Prix.The 22-year-old qualified seventh, considered impossible for a newbie.He was then swiftly poached by another team in a murky deal that led to Eddie denouncing his fellow owners as “the piranha club”.This off-track drama only helped raise the Jordan team’s profile and a so-called “Eddie mania” began to take off.He explained the attraction of his team this way: “We do things differently. We like entertaining, we like rock’n’roll.”From 1994 rock literally became part of the team’s image, when he began putting on gigs at Silverstone after the annual Grand Prix.A keen drummer since his teens, his band V10 – later called Eddie and the Robbers – became GP fixtures and were joined on stage over the years by everyone from Bono to Rod Stewart.Meanwhile in 1996 Eddie finally got his financial breakthrough, landing the deep-pocketed Benson & Hedges as a sponsor – and finally getting his trademark yellow cars.Jordan blasted his fellow team owners as the ‘piranha club’ after Schumacher was poached from himCredit: GettyJordan landed a financial breakthrough in 1996 to get his trademark yellow carsCredit: PAJordan started putting on rock concerts at Silverstone every yearCredit: PAJordan has been a keen drummer since his teensCredit: GettyInitially that year the vehicles were painted gold to match the cigarette brand’s packaging, but after a single race everyone realised the sponsorship logos did not “pop” well against that shade.So tests were done and the team found that the best background colour for logos was what became known as “Jordan Yellow”.That was a breakthrough: the Jordan cars were instantly by far the most eye-catching racers on the track.It was then Eddie realised that Jordan was a “brilliant brand” – whether or not his cars actually won was not the point.He went even further with the following year’s model by adding a snake to the paintwork. It was dubbed “Hissing Sid” and Eddie later said it had “a colossal impact”.There had been nothing like it in F1 before.Eddie also decreed that he wanted his team to be “sexy”, so in 1998 he brought in a handful of glamour models to events and races.They included Melinda Messenger and Katie Price, who had adopted the name Jordan when she first posed for The Sun in 1996.Jordan was the breakout star, and was soon being referred to in the Press as “Eddie Jordan’s pit girl”.She wrote in her autobiography: “I was definitely on the way up.”That same year, 1998, his team had its first win, when Damon Hill triumphed in the Belgian Grand Prix.Eddie danced a jig all the way to the podium.By this stage, the team was so popular that its bright yellow merchandise outsold Ferrari’s.At the end of that glorious year, unable to resist a good deal, Eddie sold 49.9 per cent of team to private equity firm Warburg Pincus for £40m.But costs for designs and drivers were rocketing as more big money came into the sport, and Eddie was still always scrabbling for sponsors.He later admitted: “We were insolvent most of the time.”It was because he was still “desperate for the money” that in 2002 he wrangled one of his proudest deals, with delivery firm DHL.They were interested in being sponsors, but balked when Eddie refused to repaint his cars white with red trim to match their company colours.So Eddie demanded a meeting with the board, then handed out a picture of a street full of boring white delivery vans.He followed that with a picture of a street full of boring white delivery vans plus one in Jordan Yellow, and his point was made.They rebranded, repainted their entire fleet and sponsored the team.Eddie boasted in 2023: “To this day they pay me a tiny royalty.”The team went on to have four wins in total, the last in 2003.But by then the Irishman was tiring, especially after he lost a £150m court case against Vodafone in 2003.He had claimed the phone giant had reneged on a sponsorship deal; the judge branded him “a wholly unsatisfactory witness”.In early 2005, Eddie sold the team to the Midland Group for £47million and walked away.He thought he would miss it, but later wrote in his autobiography: “To my surprise it did not matter at all.”He threw himself into TV commentating, golf, cycling and raising money for child cancer charity CLIC Sargent, as well as into other businesses.In March 2023 Eddie, who was awarded an honorary OBE in 2012, celebrated his 75th birthday by zooming down a black-run ski slope in a bright yellow Jordan jacket, holding dozens of yellow balloons.Twelve months later Eddie was diagnosed with cancer of the bladder and prostate, which was “quite aggressive” and quickly spread.Revealing his diagnosis on his Formula For Success podcast in December 2024 he said: “Everybody listening to this – don’t put it off. “Go and get tested, because in life you’ve got chances.”As he had said a few years earlier: “We need to get people to believe.”And that’s the key word in life, and it’s the biggest word I’ve ever used.”READ MORE SUN STORIESBut he also admitted he had plans for what he wanted done with his body when he did die.He revealed happily: “I’m going out in flames.”Jordan wanted his F1 team to be ‘sexy’Credit: GettyEddie Jordan has four children with his wife, MarieCredit: GettyHe was good friends with Sir Rod StewartCredit: GettyJordan attends the Monaco GP in 2022Credit: Getty More
