Eddie Jordan dies aged 76: the most colourful of the F1 mavericks
Eddie Jordan, who has died aged 76, was one of the most colourful characters Formula One has ever known. Even in a sport chock-full of mavericks and chancers, he was a one-off: an ex-racer who almost willed his eponymous team into existence, arriving in F1 in 1991 on a wing and a prayer, and through sheer force of personality, entrepreneurial spirit and legendary love of a deal, turning his team briefly into one of the sport’s dominant forces.
Jordan revealed in December that he had been undergoing treatment for aggressive bladder and prostate cancer but said that he had “pulled out of it, thankfully”, urging men to get their prostates checked.
The cancer is understood to have returned. Jordan died in Cape Town, South Africa, where he lived for part of the year. He is survived by wife Marie and their children Zoe, Miki, Zak and Kyle.
The Jordan family said: “EJ brought an abundance of charisma, energy and Irish charm everywhere he went. We all have a huge hole missing without his presence. He will be missed by so many people, but he leaves us with tonnes of great memories to keep us smiling through our sorrow.”
Bernie Ecclestone, the former F1 supremo who enjoyed a close relationship with Jordan over many decades, told Telegraph Sport: “It’s terrible news. He was such a character. There are two things I’d say about Eddie Jordan. One, you thought that he would never – could never – die. And two, it’s a bloody shame that we haven’t got more characters like him in the sport now. You look around the team principals now and none of them are on the same street.”
Asked whether it was true that he once called the Irishman a “robber” which gave Jordan the name for his band – Eddie and the Robbers – Ecclestone, 94, replied: “Possibly. I called him lots of things. But most of all he was a super guy. Eddie knew how to hustle and he knew how to strike a deal, a man after my own heart.”
Jordan held the worst-kept secret in the paddock
Jordan was born in Dublin on March 30, 1948, the son of Eileen and Paddy Jordan. His father was an accountant with the Electricity Supply Board whom Jordan once described as “a quiet and stable kind of person”. He added: “I am different. I take after my mother.”
Jordan, whose family did not own a television growing up, a fact he credited with his individuality and musicality (he played the spoons and later the drums) was a latecomer to racing, a world full of people who were either born into it, or practised it from a young age.
RIP my friend. Condolences to each and every one of your lovely family. What a character. What a rock star. What a racer. So many drivers owe you so much, you gave us our chances and believed in us. 🥲 pic.twitter.com/7yexhsxC0h
— Martin Brundle OBE (@MBrundleF1) March 20, 2025
Jordan’s first experience of racing came in the summer of 1970 when a banking strike in Dublin meant he could not work in his job as a clerk. He originally wanted to be a priest, then a dentist, and actually qualified as an accountant.
On his return to Ireland, he bought a kart, winning the Irish championship at his first attempt in 1971.
Jordan went on to race in Formula Ford and Formula 3, suffering a nasty accident at Mallory Park in 1976 and breaking a leg. It was while convalescing from this accident that he lost his hair. Jordan wore a hairpiece throughout his career, for many years one of the sport’s worst-kept secrets.
The man who gave Schumacher his debut
After realising he was not good enough to make it to the top, Jordan segued into team ownership, founding his first team, Eddie Jordan Racing, which he operated from a former pig shed at Silverstone. On his way up to F1, he ran drivers such as Martin Brundle, who pushed Ayrton Senna close in British F3 in 1983, and Johnny Herbert, who finally won that title in 1987.
Jordan founded his F1 team in 1991, setting up a purpose-built factory at Silverstone which lasted until a couple of years ago when it was bulldozed for the new Aston Martin facility. No-one now is quite sure how he managed to will his team into existence, but his gift of the gab was legendary. Jordan went on to give Michael Schumacher his debut that same year, before losing him a year later. With Gary Anderson as his chief designer and Ian Phillips his commercial director, Jordan Grand Prix went from strength to strength.
The team achieved their best ever result when drivers Damon Hill and Ralf Schumacher finished first and second at the Belgian Grand Prix in 1998. They finished third in the championship the following year when Heinz-Harald Frentzen also challenged for the drivers’ title, winning two races en route to a third-place finish. Frentzen had to retire from the lead of the European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring that year. Had he won he would have been within a point of the championship lead with two rounds remaining.
Along the way, he made enemies as well as friends, but generally got away with it and lived to tell the tale. “One day he’s a character you’d drive off the end of the earth for, and the next… if you had a gun you’d shoot him.” So said Trevor Foster, the former Jordan team manager and engineer, about his ex-boss.
Jordan faded as a force in the 2000s, losing a Honda engine partnership deal to the BAR team in 2002, which combined with the loss of sponsors DHL and Benson & Hedges put the team in a difficult position. He was bought out by Midland in 2005.
A dealmaker to the end
Jordan continued to be a big figure in the sport, as a pundit on television and radio, and latterly as a podcaster on his Formula For Success podcast which he co-hosted with David Coulthard, the ex-driver.
He owned homes in Cape Town, South Kensington and Monaco, where he kept his yacht. Even last year he was instrumental in Adrian Newey’s move from Red Bull to Aston Martin, acting as Newey’s agent and turning up to the latter’s unveiling at Silverstone last autumn, on the same site as his old team.
By then Jordan had been battling a form of bladder and prostate cancer for most of the year, but he thought he was through the worst of it, declaring on his podcast that his prognosis was “absolutely fantastic” and warning other men to get checked.
Sadly the cancer returned over the winter, although he remained active, doing deals until the end. Last month Jordan led a consortium to buy London Irish more than a year after the Premiership club was suspended from all rugby for being unable to pay its players.
‘A huge character who tried to sell me his team’
Tributes for the Irishman poured in on Thursday as the Formula One circus arrived in Shanghai for this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix, the second race of the season.
F1 chief executive Stefano Domenicali added in a statement: “We are deeply saddened to hear about the sudden loss of Eddie Jordan. With his inexhaustible energy he always knew how to make people smile, remaining genuine and brilliant at all times. Eddie has been a protagonist of an era of F1 and he will be deeply missed. In this moment of sorrow, my thoughts and those of the entire Formula One family are with his family and loved ones.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said: “Very sorry to hear Eddie Jordan has sadly passed. Eddie was a hugely colourful character who I first met in 1991 as a young driver at his then new factory after his first year in Formula One. His advice, ‘Get a good sponsor… welcome to the Piranha Club!’
“I was fortunate to overlap with him when I came into Formula One. He was in the twilight of his F1 career race-wise (indeed he even tried to sell me his team) but went into other activities where he was always full of energy and fun to work with.
“Formula One has lost a legend and we will miss his wit and his Irish charm. On behalf of Oracle Red Bull Racing, we send our sincere condolences to Marie and the children at this sad time; our thoughts are with them. God speed, Eddie.”
Eddie Jordan created F1’s modern landscape with pure determination
This is a sad day on which all our sympathies go to Eddie’s family. They’ve known in more depth what’s been going on than anyone has in the outside world. Eddie was quite a private person. He had a big front but down inside he was a very private person. His wife Marie and the family are the ones who should obviously be in our thoughts right now.
In terms of his contribution to our sport, the big thing about Eddie is that he made all teams realise that if you try hard enough in Formula One, you can be successful.
When we got involved in Formula One in the early 90s, teams were coming and going and none of the smaller teams felt they could achieve something. Jordan Grand Prix, and especially Eddie, brought that fight to Formula One. The message was “we’ve got the big four here, but they all came from somewhere too.” If you fought hard enough it could become the big five and you could compete with them, but it wasn’t easy. I think Eddie taught Formula One that. I think that’s the Formula One we’re seeing today. The legacy from Eddie is a much stronger, more in-depth formula than it had been in the 80s. And it all came from his pure determination.
This morning was very sad. We had been texting back and forth. But it went quiet over the last couple of months. I thought, ‘Well, that’s strange, because normally he’s okay with asking questions about it or telling me about it’. It was obviously getting to be a bit near the mark. So although there is shock today, in reality it is not a surprise.
Eddie was a fighter who would have done his damnedest right to the end. He fought for everything he got through his motor racing career, and it was a pleasure to work with him. He was a good guy.
We were friends before we were work colleagues. I knew him from 1982/1983 when we were doing European Formula Three together. We were competing against each other and he was always trying to steal my drivers or their sponsorship. That was a habit he kept to the end in our sport. If there’s money inside or outside of the car he went after it. But he was a good guy. He gave a lot of people like myself an opportunity, which was a major thing.
I’m really pleased that I got to know him and I’m just as pleased that I got to work with him. He was always a fighter and he had a lot of pressure keeping the money together for Jordan Grand Prix, especially in the early days, but he welcomed that. He came to work with an infectious tenacity.
The thing about Eddie was that he was always there for you. Even through our troubled times when I left Jordan in 1998 and went to join Stewart Grand Prix, Eddie was still always there as such.
Yes, it was hard to work for him, but we all knew he had his pressures so you had to accept these sort of things. He had sponsors chasing him down for success, and if we weren’t achieving, they were asking the questions. It was only right that he would then be asking us: “Why?”
Every day was a new experience. I remember the early days going to sit down with Eddie and trying to say to him “these new chassis, they’re going to cost us £20,000 to make – is that in the budget?” He’d always be: “Can we do a bit cheaper than that?” He didn’t have the £20,000 or whatever it was but we always did the best we could with what we had. We tried not to get involved with the fact that the money had to come from somewhere. We had a budget, and we tried to work to it.
Eddie would try to protect me from all of that. He would always be the one that was protecting me from knowing about the budget situation. It was a good working relationship, especially in the early part of Jordan GP.
Away from racing. Eddie had a place down in the south of Spain where we went as a family with my wife and my daughter. We never really had any major plans in our spare time, however, because we already spent so much of our lives alongside one another for every working day and every race weekend.
But memories of Eddie will always be there for me and my family. In my house, I’ve got lots of motor racing pictures on the walls. Eddie’s in so many of them. He’s not going to be forgotten very easily.
Today is just one of those days that is coming to us all. We’re all in the lap of the gods and we have to accept that, although I know Eddie would have fought to the bitter end. There’s nothing he could have done differently. He had his life, and he lived it well. He enjoyed 99.9 per cent of it but it was that 0.1 per cent that got him in the end.
It’s his wife Marie and his family that need sympathy now. They were with him through all this. I’m pretty sure he would have gone still as the jovial Eddie Jordan that we all want to remember.
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