OBITUARY: Remembering Eddie Jordan, one of F1's most colourful characters

Was there ever a more colourful character to grace the F1 paddocks of the world than Edmund Patrick Jordan – universally known as Eejay – who has died at the age of 76 after a long and typically brave fight with cancer?

Eejay was one of the sport’s last and greatest privateers. A halfway decent racing driver himself until a nasty accident at Mallory Park in 1976 left him with two broken legs, he became better known as a winning team owner in the brutally competitive arenas of British and European Formula 3, International Formula 3000 and then F1 itself.

Born in Dublin on March 30, 1948, he originally toyed with the idea of joining the priesthood, or pursing dentistry, but eventually joined the Bank of Ireland in 1967, spending some time in Jersey as part of his role. That banking experience would serve him extremely well, with Eejay absorbing plenty of lessons, and later putting them to great use keeping his initially impecunious ventures afloat.

He caught the racing bug after watching kart races at Jersey’s famed Bouley Bay hillclimb, and once he was back in Dublin he set about acquiring a kart himself.

After winning the 1974 Irish Championship he graduated to Formula Ford 1600 in 1975 and then moved to Britain to race in F3 with a March in 1976; but after that Mallory shunt he spent much of the year recovering. And planning his future. He was never one to waste time.

That future lay in racing an ex-Alan Jones March in Formula Atlantic, where he won the Irish Championship. He then hatched an ambitious plan to run upcoming Swede Stefan Johansson in the British Formula 3 series, under the aegis of Team Ireland. The apogee of his own driving career came in 1979 when he raced in the finale of the F2 Championship at Donington Park, taking ninth place.

He also tested an F1 McLaren M26 at Brands Hatch. But he decided that driving was not his true métier, and focused thereafter on running Eddie Jordan Racing (EJR) from 1980 onwards, apart from two outings in the Le Mans 24 Hours.

1981 was a financially tricky season with the two Davids, Leslie and Sears, but backing from the Racing for Britain effort helped to keep it going. There were successes with James Weaver in 1982, but it was in 1983 that EJR really left its mark as Martin Brundle took the title fight to Ayrton Senna right up until the final round.

After the near miss it hurt to watch rivals – and friends – Dick Bennetts at West Surrey Racing, Murray Taylor and Dave Price winning the prestigious championship, but in 1987 Eejay mated together the latest Reynard chassis, a Spiess Volkswagen engine and rising British star Johnny Herbert and their success acted as a springboard into F3000.

They challenged for the title in 1988 and would probably have won but for the accident at Brands Hatch with Gregor Foitek, which ruined Herbert’s career. In 1989, with Jean Alesi and Martin Donnelly, EJR finally triumphed.

Eejay was not just a team owner whose colourful exterior often fooled people into under-estimating the fundamental talent at his core. This embraced not just team but driver management. That summer he negotiated Alesi into Tyrrell for his F1 debut in France, and also Donnelly into Arrows there in place of the injured Derek Warwick.

Now EJR commanded respect, and for 1990 while running Eddie Irvine and Emanuele Naspetti he started bringing together the elements for the big move into F1. Typically he was smart – and brave – enough to appreciate that he needed a proper factory rather than the trusty unit from which he had been running things, and took a huge gamble creating one opposite Silverstone, where today Aston Martin’s opulent facility operates after it had started as Jordan Grand Prix.

With a car designed by former Reynard star Gary Anderson, powered by customer Ford engines and sponsored by Seven Up, Jordan had escaped the dreaded pre-qualifying sessions and scored points by mid-season, and was ready for the next big moment in the upward trajectory.

This came at Spa when regular driver Bertrand Gachot had been imprisoned for macing a cab driver in London, and a reluctant Eejay only agreed to run a relatively little-known endurance driver called Michael Schumacher when he learned that Mercedes would sweeten the risk with some cash.

Michael might have burned out the clutch at the start, but in Qualifying a sensational seventh had demonstrated instant potential, and his feedback had also confirmed to Jordan that Anderson’s car had front-running potential in the right hands.

That time Eejay was unusually outsmarted by Benetton’s Flavio Briatore, who snaffled the German away, but after running future decent drivers as Robert Moreno and Alex Zanardi for the rest of 1991, and then a disastrous spell with Yamaha engines in 1992, he regrouped in 1993 around young Brazilian newcomer Rubens Barrichello and Hart engines.

Some of the buzz of 1991 had been diluted, but Eejay was nothing if not resilient, and after the Harts came spells with Peugeot, Mugen-Honda, Honda and Ford engines. And victories.

The big breakthrough came courtesy of Damon Hill at Spa in 1998, where the former champion proved a point with a great triumph ahead of team-mate Ralf Schumacher; it was typical of Eejay’s luck that when his team finally won, he did it with a 1-2. Then in 1999 Heinz-Harald Frentzen was a genuine contender for the title for a while, taking victories at Magny-Cours and Monza.

F1 was always a tough fight, however, and Jordan’s last success came in Interlagos in 2003 courtesy of Giancarlo Fisichella, once the organisers had penalised McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen.

Not surprisingly, Bernie Ecclestone was a big fan of Eejay’s, admiring his chutzpah and that resilience, and he helped him to sell his team to Russian-Canadian businessman Alex Shnaider early in 2005. After that it had several owners, and ran as Spyker, Midland, Force India, Racing Point and is today known as Aston Martin.

Eejay himself became a television pundit, enjoying upsetting the sensitive with some of his outrageously controversial and nearly always amusing comments and opinions.

Almost as important to him as racing was music, and for a time Chris Rea was a regular Jordan guest at races. Then there was his band, many thought appropriately titled Eddie and The Robbers at Bernie’s suggestion, with which he regularly entertained crowds after a British GP.

Edmund Patrick Jordan was exactly what a high-powered sport needed, a colourful, funny, cheeky and intensely determined and lovable character. How he loved surprising everyone as he managed Adrian Newey’s switch from Red Bull to Aston Martin! How many people really saw that coming, or even knew he and Adrian were so close?

And how he must be chuckling to see how many of us mourn the loss of a man it was impossible not to embrace in the close friendship that his character encouraged so easily.