Eddie Jordan, from bank employee to be the first chief of Michael Schumacher in F1

The Irish founded his own team for the highest category, showed commercial cunning to survive, gave the first car to German heptacampeon and came to celebrate four successes in F1. He died at age 76.

Danny Jordan had a twin sister of a nun who was the rector of the Irish sisters of charity. Probably this closeness with religion led Eddie Jordan, son of Danny, to think about taking habits and becoming a priest. Discarded the idea of ​​giving Mass, the Irish grew and became a bank employee at the Bank of Ireland. So far, no one in his surroundings will have imagined that the Dublinés would end up being Owner of a Formula 1 team and that would win races. Eddie died at age 76 product of bladder and prostate cancer that had spread in its body. Undoubtedly, he left his wake in F1.

How did the bank go from motor racing? During a strike he had to look for another job and went to Jersey. There he first saw a karting career and fell in love. His attempt to be a pilot was that, an attempt. He did not have the conditions, beyond having won the title of the Atlantic Formula of 1978. In 1980 he decided to found his own team: Eddie Jordan Racing. In his passage through the minor categories, he tried to have Ayrton Senna in the Ford formula, although he did not succeed, but he could sit in his car for the Macao GP.

Cunning, intelligent for business, Sagaz, Locouaz, of vulgar terms in dialogues, fast and tenacious are characteristics that Jordan had. His words speaking became a classic (Ron Dennis didn’t like that facet). To have an example of its cunning: in the F3000 of 1988 in Jerez, Jordan’s teams had the advertising of Camel cigarettes. Johnny Herbert’s victory with the Irish ‘car led to the image from touring the caps of the automobile magazines of Europe. There was a detail: Camel had rejected Jordan’s proposal to be a sponsor. With the cuts and the trophy, he returned to Camel’s offices and, of course, took the check.

Jordan wanted to reach F1 and did it in 1991 with his own team, at the time when the owners of the teams had a face, it was not a business conglomerate. Eddie appeared with his 911 chassis in 1991, but he had to change him for Porsche’s anger. So it was 191, which was black in the presentation, without sponsorships. Before the teasing, Eddie painted the car in green and went out to look for support from companies to use that color. And the 7-Up drink appeared, which sorrows collaborated with two million dollars. Then he closed with Fuji and was already on track.

Jordan’s economy was at the limit, he had no money and did not reach what Bertrand Gachot and Andrea de Cesaris contributed, two payment corridors that ran in that 1991 season. But everything changed suddenly when Gachot sprayed a taxi driver in London with pepper gas and ended up imprisoned. The Belgium GP was coming and Jordan was missing a pilot. And Willi Weber’s call, the representative of one Michael Schumacher, who ran in Sport Prototype with Mercedes came. The German gathered the 80,000 pounds that Jordan asked and debuted in Spa and surprised the world with his seventh place in the classification. Neither Lerdo nor lazy appeared the ineffable Flavio Briatore to steal from German and sit immediately in a Benetton. Jordan could not avoid the exit of the German.

The Jordan team continued and grew. Rubens Barrichello caliber pilots, Giancarlo Fisichella, or Jarno Trulli, to name just a few, passed through the Eddie team. He won four victories (the 1998 Belgium GP was the first with Damon Hill) and ended third in the 1999 World Cup.

That first contact with Senna of the Ford formula was resumed for 1994. Ayrton was not satisfied with the walk of McLaren and was going to go. Jordan offered to run on his team and, not only that, deliver 50% of the shares of the team. Senna did not accept the offer and went to Williams. The rest is known history. Some time later, Jordan would confess that the talks continued, because the Brazilian wanted to have a team.

In 1998, Jordan sold 49.9% of his team to the Warburg Pincus group for 65 million dollars, but was still in the handling of the team. In 2005, he would sell the remaining package to the Midland group at 30 million. Thus, Eddie’s passage through F1 was over. Then, he dedicated much of his life to being a F1 commentator and in recent years he was a representative of his friend Adrian Newey. In fact, the first visit of the engineer to the Aston Martin plant, his new team, made it with Eddie.

Jordan was an independent team owner, a Rockstar, a chichararacheof foul language, which always gave a different color to the F1. At 76 he died in Cabo City, next to his family.