Viewers of Netflix’s Drive to Survive have become accustomed to the modern Formula One world of enormous hi-tech teams supported by armies of corporate sponsors and marketing, media and PR specialists. Eddie Jordan, who has died aged 76 of prostate cancer, represented a previous era of buccaneering individualists who made their own luck and built their teams in their own image.
“We were johnny-come-latelies, noisy, brash, having a good time, giving the establishment two fingers,” Jordan told MotorSport magazine. “So we got lots of attention, lots of value for our sponsors, and a huge fanbase.”
Jordan Grand Prix draped Page 3 models over their cars and were the rock’n’rollers in the F1 paddock, not least because Jordan could frequently be seen flailing away behind his drumkit in his band Eddie’s Pitstop Boogie Boys (who often played at Silverstone after the British Grand Prix) or subsequently Eddie & the Robbers. He was good friends with rock stars including George Harrison, Genesis’s Mike Rutherford, Chris Rea and John Lydon, and when Led Zeppelin staged their one-off reunion at London’s O2 Arena in 2007, Eddie was there.
But he was also a brilliant entrepreneur and deal-maker. He gave Michael Schumacher his first Formula One drive, and his efforts also ensured that Jordan came fifth in the World Championship in their debut year of 1991, a remarkable achievement for a fledgling independent team. During his team’s lifespan from 1991 to 2005, he employed numerous top drivers including Eddie Irvine, Rubens Barrichello, the 1996 world champion Damon Hill, Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Jean Alesi.
In 1998, Hill brought the team their first win at the Belgian Grand Prix, and Frentzen added two more the following year, helping Jordan to reach third place in the World Championship, their best performance. In 2003 Giancarlo Fisichella won the team’s final victory at Interlagos in Brazil.
Jordan was a close friend of F1’s eminence grise Bernie Ecclestone, and shared something of his deal-making instinct. In 1995 he made a small fortune by selling Irvine’s contract to Ferrari. He explained: “Irvine would come to me for free and I’d give him a three-year contract, and build him up, and build him up, and then sell him to Ferrari. He’d get 13 or 14 million and Ferrari would pay me five.” A major sponsorship deal with Benson & Hedges for the 1996 season prompted Jordan’s cars to turn yellow.
In 1998, Jordan sold half his shares to the private equity firm Warburg Pincus, then bought them back at a substantial profit. On Ecclestone’s recommendation, he sold Jordan Grand Prix to the billionaire Alex Schnaider for a reported $60m, and in 2006 the team became Midland F1 (and would subsequently become Spyker and Force India before its latest iteration as Aston Martin).
He pulled off another entrepreneurial coup in 2024, when acting as manager for Adrian Newey, arguably the greatest car designer in F1 history. He negotiated Newey’s transfer from Red Bull to Aston Martin, based at Jordan’s original Silverstone site, for a rumoured salary of £30m.
After selling his team, he had a media career as an F1 pundit, for BBC Sport’s Grand Prix programme from 2009, then for Channel 4’s F1 coverage from 2016. He presented Top Gear in 2016-18, and in 2023 he and David Coulthard launched their podcast, Formula for Success.
Eddie was born in Dublin, the son of Paddy and Eileen Jordan. His father was an accountant for the Electricity Supply Board, and his mother a housewife. He also had an elder sister, Helen. “My mother was the boss and head of the family, and I think I took a lot from her,” Eddie told the Sunday Telegraph. “We had that strong mother-and-youngest-son bond. I was driven.”
He attended Synge Street Christian Brothers school, displaying early entrepreneurial flair by dealing conkers, marbles and school textbooks, and at one point considered becoming a priest (his father’s twin sister was a senior nun with the Irish Sisters of Charity). He briefly considered dentistry but then got a job in the Bank of Ireland. In 1970, a banking strike prompted him to move to Jersey to earn money, where he not only trained in accountancy but tried go-karting, and became infatuated with it.
Back in Ireland, he pursued his karting hobby and was successful enough to win the Irish Kart Championship in 1971. He then moved up to Formula Ford (partly sponsored by a Dublin carpet shop), although he suffered a temporary setback when he broke both legs in a crash at the Mallory Park circuit in Leicestershire in 1975. He bounced back in Formula Atlantic, and won the Irish Formula Atlantic title in 1978.
He then moved to England and, now married to Marie McCarthy (a former basketball player for Ireland), tried his luck in Formula Three, but with little success. He decided to switch from driver to team owner, and formed Eddie Jordan Racing (EJR) in 1979.
The team enjoyed a standout season in F3 in 1983, when their driver Martin Brundle came a close second to the gifted Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna. “We so nearly won the championship because we psyched Senna, and he started to make mistakes,” Jordan said.
In 1987 Johnny Herbert won the British F3 title with EJR, then in 1989 EJR’s new signing, the French driver Alesi, won the F3000 title. Herbert had now entered F1 with the Benetton team, and Alesi followed suit with Tyrrell (assisted by Jordan’s sponsorship contacts with the Camel cigarette brand).
This inspired Jordan to make the leap to F1 himself. He assembled a team including the designer Gary Anderson, and attracted sponsorship from Marlboro, 7UP and the Irish government.
He signed up the drivers Andrea de Cesaris and Bertrand Gachot, who racked up some solid results before Gachot was involved in a bizarre road-rage incident at Hyde Park Corner in London in which he sprayed a taxi driver with CS gas. This earned Gachot a prison sentence, and as replacement Jordan signed Schumacher for his F1 debut.
Schumacher only drove once for Jordan, at Spa in Belgium, but his performance was so sensational that he was scooped up by the Benetton team, even though Jordan apparently had a watertight contract with him. The episode highlighted the machiavellian politics lurking behind the glamorous facade of F1.
Jordan had numerous interests outside motor racing, building up a substantial property portfolio as well as being a shareholder in Celtic FC and co-owner of the London Irish Rugby Club. He had investments in gaming and entertainment businesses, and launched his own V-10 vodka and the energy drink EJ-10. He also owned several luxury yachts.
He was a patron of the child cancer charity CLIC Sargent and the youth charity the Amber Foundation. In 2012 he was appointed an honorary OBE for his services to charity and motor racing. His autobiography, An Independent Man, was published in 2007.
On Jordan’s death, Ecclestone commented: “Eddie was a special guy. Tell me which team principal today is like him. You can’t give me one because there isn’t one. They don’t make them like that now. We will never replace him in Formula One.”
He is survived by Marie and their children, Zoe, Miki, Zak and Kyle.
• Edmund Patrick Jordan, motor racing entrepreneur, driver, businessman and broadcaster, born 30 March 1948; died 20 March 2025
