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Eddie Jordan in 1998, the year his Jordan team had their best result, a 1-2 finish at the Belgian Grand Prix - Billy Stickland/INPHO via Getty Images
Eddie Jordan, who has died of cancer aged 76, was the charismatic Dublin-born founder and former owner of the Jordan Grand Prix team (JGP), and one of Formula One’s great characters – and talent spotters.
During his career, including 14 years at the helm of JGP (1991-2005), Jordan, popularly known as “EJ”, discovered and championed the talents of drivers who became household names, among them Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Michael and Ralf Schumacher and the late Ayrton Senna.
After selling his Grand Prix team in 2005 he became an outspoken television pundit for BBC Sport’s Grand Prix coverage then, from 2016, one of the new line-up of Top Gear presenters as well as lead presenter of F1 coverage on Channel 4.
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Jordan in 1992 - Billy Stickland/INPHO via Getty Images
In contrast to the majority of F1 teams, which are owned by car manufacturers or are in long-term partnerships with them, JGP was a so-called “independent”, feted as the underfunded underdog battling against the Goliaths of the car industry. Its owner seemed a throwback to an era predating the corporatisation of pit lane and paddock, a flamboyant adventurer whose passion for racing and reputation as the life and soul of the paddock party, inspired genuine affection ( and some exasperation) among aficionados of the sport.
Everyone had an Eddie Jordan story – about some deal he managed to pull off through sheer charm (“People say I didn’t kiss the Blarney, I stole it”); a horse he managed to acquire thanks to some tip-off; his exploits as a drummer with his band Eddie & the Robbers; a hairpiece which fell off in a swimming pool (Jordan, who developed alopecia following an accident, had three wigs of different length, which he wore in rotation). “Whether in the paddock or at Celtic Park where he serves as a director, it is always easy to find Eddie Jordan,” observed the Telegraph’s Robert Philip in 2003. “You simply follow the sound of laughter.”
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Jordan on the podium following the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix, when his drivers Damon Hill and Ralf Schumacher finished first and second - Paul-Henri Cahier/Getty Images
JPG’s greatest day was the one-two finish in the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix by Damon Hill and Ralf Schumacher, a victory seen as breaking the grip the top teams of the time had on the sport. But the team’s best season was 1999, when Heinz-Harald Frentzen won two races and was in contention for the title until the penultimate round. He finished third in the drivers’ championship (ahead of world champion Mika Hakkinen’s team-mate David Coulthard), and JGP came third in the constructors’ standings, well behind Ferrari and McLaren-Mercedes but a long way ahead of the rest of the field.
But things became more difficult after the Millennium, with sponsorship problems and divisions within the team, and despite an improbable race win by Giancarlo Fisichella in the Brazilian Grand Prix of 2003, the team finished a lowly ninth in the constructors’ championship that season, one place above the pointless Minardi. Meanwhile, Jordan’s own reputation took a beating from Mr Justice Langley at the Royal Courts of Justice after Jordan, an inveterate risk-taker by his own admission, took potential sponsors Vodafone to court claiming £150 million in damages for what he saw as the company reneging on a verbal agreement.
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Conferring with Sir Jackie Stewart in 1998 - Sutton Images
He lost the case, the judge describing him as “a wholly unsatisfactory witness” and his evidence as “in many instances in stark conflict with, and indeed belied by, the documents, often of his own making”. He was ordered to pay Vodafone’s legal costs of £1.53m plus interest.
It seemed that Jordan’s luck had finally run out. Yet JGP remained debt-free, Jordan had made his fortune (estimated at well over £60m in 2004), and he was able to joke about his High Court debacle: “For a dead man I’m looking pretty good... I might leave court off the agenda for a while. If there’s anyone who wants to sue me, I give in straight away. Just ask me how much. Only joking...”
In 2005 he sold the team for a reported €75 million to the Midland Group, owned by Alex Shnaider, a 36-year-old Canadian entrepreneur of Russian origin.
Eddie Jordan was born in Dublin on March 30 1948 to Paddy and Eileen Jordan. His father, a “quiet man”, was an accountant. “My mother was the boss and head of the family, and I think I took a lot from her,” he told The Sunday Telegraph in 2016: “we had that strong mother-and-youngest-son bond. I was driven,”
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Jordan during practice for the Spanish Grand Prix in 2002 - John Marsh/Reuters
At Synge Street Christian Brothers School he traded conkers and marbles in the playground, and made money by buying his friends’ schoolbooks then selling them for a profit to the next class coming up. He briefly considered becoming a priest, but dismissed the idea, as well as resisting family pressures to train as a dentist.
Instead, he worked as a clerk with the Bank of Ireland, arranging car loans for retail customers. “I was by far the best person at opening new accounts, so I could see I had a smell for sales.”
His passion for racing was sparked in 1970 when, temporarily unemployed owing to a bank strike, he left Dublin for Jersey where he worked as a trainee accountant by day and a barman at night. “I had Sundays off. I’d go to Bouley Bay Kart Club, hire a kart and go mental.” He economised by living in digs.
For the next decade, Jordan’s life was dominated by racing and he took frequent unpaid sabbaticals from his Dublin banking job to compete, starting in karts then graduating to single-seaters. He won three Formula Atlantic races in 1977, followed in 1978 by the Irish Formula Atlantic Championship. He also competed in the British F3 Championship. In 1979 he made his F2 debut, test-drove a McLaren F1 car and set up Eddie Jordan Racing.
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Jordan in 2004 with pit girls Michelle Clack, left, and Leah Newman at the launch of the Regent Street Formula One Parade in London - Fred Duval/FilmMagic
The same year he married Marie McCarthy, a former Ireland basketball international, and in 1980 he retired as a racing driver to concentrate on building his team. He enjoyed success in Formula 3000 and F3, with Johnny Herbert winning the British F3 title in 1987 and Jean Alesi winning the 1989 International Formula 3000 Championship. In 1991 he established Jordan Grand Prix and graduated to F1.
Financing JGP was hard. In its first year, he recalled, “I put everything I had, including my house, in hock to build the car, and ended up owing money. The bailiff understood completely and used to call me to tell me when he was coming.”
Jordan pulled through and JGP finished a creditable fifth in its debut campaign. The season was also notable for the arrival of a talented young German called Michael Schumacher, whom Jordan drafted in at the last minute to replace JGP’s regular driver Bertrand Gachot, who was spending time at Her Majesty’s Pleasure for settling an argument with a London taxi driver with a can of CS gas, and was unable to take part in the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa.
Driving a Jordan-Ford, Schumacher qualified seventh, matching the team’s season-best grid position, and was immediately poached (provoking a Jordan writ) by Flavio Briatore to drive for Benetton. “Welcome to the Piranha Club,” the McLaren boss Ron Dennis told him.
After selling JGP, Jordan was the chief analyst for F1 coverage on the BBC alongside Jake Humphrey (later replaced by Suzi Perry) and David Coulthard, from 2009 to 2015, before joining Channel 4 after the BBC pulled out in 2016 and becoming a presenter on Top Gear.
The owner of lavish properties in Cape Town, Oxford, London and Monaco, as well as a 105ft “super-yacht”, Jordan had extensive business and property interests. Among others, he was the co-owner of London Irish rugby club, owner of the Debrett’s publishing house, a shareholder in Celtic FC and a partner in the hedge fund, Clareville Capital.
He and his wife Marie were tireless fundraisers for charity, particularly for Cancer and Leukaemia in Childhood (Clic) of which they were both patrons, helping to raise £11 million in three years and building houses near hospitals so that parents could be with their children when ill. Jordan was also patron of the Amber Foundation, a youth charity. In 2012 he was appointed an honorary OBE for his services to motor racing and to charity.
In 2007 he published an autobiography, An Independent Man. In December last year he announced that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate and bladder cancer.
Eddie Jordan is survived by his wife Marie and by their four children.
Eddie Jordan, born March 30 1948, died March 20 2025
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