Jordan – Formula 1 with a human face

Late last summer I had lunch one day with a publisher in London. It was hot, if you can remember that, and we discussed a possible synopsis for a book, the cool Chablis slipped down very readily.

What were they like, these Formula 1 people? Well, I said, they’re a mix, as in any avenue of life. Some are smarter than others. There are those you enjoy, and those from whom you hide. You trust some, remember the lies of others. One thing they have largely in common, though, I added: they’re not poor.

It was at this point that the waiter put something before me. A folder, it was, bearing the letters ‘EJR’. I looked inside, and there was a scribbled message: “All sponsorship contributions gratefully accepted.”

The waiter pointed to another table across the room, and there sat the first two letters of ‘EJR’, as ever with a grin on his face. Later, on his way out, he stopped by the table for a gossip, conducted at a million miles an hour. Then, “Sorry to disturb your lunch”, and he was gone.

My host was clearly shaken. “My God,” he said, “are they all like that?” No, no, I answered; and more’s the pity of it.

At that time Eddie Jordan was in trouble. He had his Formula 3000 team, and he managed a number of successful drivers, most notably Jean Alesi, previously a star of his own team. That much was fine, and so also were the wind tunnel figures for his forthcoming F1 car. To go in the back of it, against all odds, and general stupefaction in the paddock, he had persuaded Ford to supply him with HB V8s. Problem was, late last summer, he didn’t know how he was going to pay for them.

The problem arose when Camel, his sponsor through two highly successful seasons of F3000, decided against backing him in F1. A deal had been agreed; but not inked.

Jordan secured engines from Ford, but how to pay for it was another matter

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

“Duncan Lee, of Camel, was actually the first person outside the team to see the wind-tunnel model of the car,” Jordan remembers. “We’d won a lot of races for them, and thought they wanted to continue with an all-yellow car as they had at Lotus. However…”

However. A seemingly unfathomable decision was taken to be instead simply yet another sponsor of Benetton, where the exposure on the car is inevitably far less, the name and colour lost in the frightful melange that is Luciano’s colour scheme. Does ‘Benetton’ say ‘Camel’ to you? Nor to me, either.

This, however, was neither here nor there to Eddie. Doubtless he filed away Sam Goldwyn’s exquisite remark, “A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on”, but what he needed to do urgently was find some real money.

“Deep down I’m perhaps basically lazy, but if I absolutely have to perform, then I’m at my best. And you need to be very careful of me then, because I’m quite a fighter by nature” Eddie Jordan

As he continued to show up at the grands prix, Jordan was always completely open about his predicament. “It’s the only way,” he says. “You can tell journalists a load of lies, if you want, but you won’t get away with it for long – and they’ll nail you for it. You can tell them nothing, and they’ll stop bothering to ask. Or you can tell them the truth, in which case perhaps there will be things in print you’d prefer not to see, but they’ll appreciate your openness, and won’t forget it.”

Eddie was worried, but not disheartened. He felt he had a lot to offer, not least the Ford HB, for which so many other teams had clamoured. How had he put his case to Michael Kranefuss?

“Ha! That’d be giving the big secret away…” he replies. “No, no, there was nothing clever about it. I met him for breakfast in Phoenix, before last year’s race. He knew what I’d done with certain drivers, like Alesi, and he listened. Then he said he’d recommend our name be put on a list – which already had three or four on it.

“We then had several meetings with Cosworth, and the deal was signed at the end of June. When Camel changed its mind about coming with us, I was fortunate that Cosworth kept faith with me. They’ve been super.”

Jordan went to the “end of the world” to secure sponsorship from 7Up and Fujifilm

Photo by: Ercole Colombo

Super, yes, but still they have to send out bills. At the races Jordan continued to put what we thought was a brave face on it, but in reality his optimism never wavered.

“I’m at my best,” he maintains, “when my back is to the wall. Deep down I’m perhaps basically lazy, but if I absolutely have to perform, then I’m at my best. And you need to be very careful of me then, because I’m quite a fighter by nature, although I have to be pushed to extreme lengths to do it. At all costs, I will get myself out of a situation.

“We gained considerable credibility when Ford gave us the engine, and it helped enormously when selling ourselves to American corporations. As you know, I’m not exactly behind the door when it comes to asking for sponsorship – you’re always allowed to say no, and it will be accepted. With grace. But I’ll always ask. One thing I think I’m quite good at is marrying deals together, tying sponsors in with each other.”

Yes, but. By the end of 1990, there was a car and an engine, but still no name for them to carry. Eddie admits that was a bad time.

“I was feeling some desperation – without ever showing it, of course,” he says. “But, just when I thought I’d lost everything, the Pepsi-Cola Company deal came up and we had 7Up on the cars. I thought, ‘I’m there – I can work the pieces together now’. I was still a long way off, in terms of the funding I needed, but the pieces I needed for the puzzle were there. I had Ford, and Goodyear, and now Pepsi.”

After that, sponsors headed for Jordan Grand Prix as if in shoals, Eddie’s deal with Fuji being done around the time of the Brazilian GP. “I went from London to Tokyo to London to Sao Paulo,” he smiles, then winces at the memory of it all. “Then I came back from Brazil, and went straight off to Japan again. I was exhausted, but I don’t mind doing that – I’ll go to the end of the world to clinch something.”

The Jordan-Ford 191, designed by Gary Anderson, impressed from the outset. It looked beautiful, and it went as well as it looked. In the early races, though, there were some frustrations, many a good finish evaporating in late race problems.

Top 10: Best looking F1 cars ranked

“After four races we looked good,” Eddie agrees, “but still the fact remained we had no points. It was a matter of overcoming the image of ‘a pretty car with great potential’. We weren’t turning that potential into results, and when tension sets in – as with a football team or anything else – the outfit doesn’t work to its maximum efficiency. Therefore, it was an incredible thing when we finished fourth and fifth in Canada.

The team really grabbed attention at the 1991 Canadian GP

Photo by: Sutton Images

“I’ll remember Montreal to the day I drop down, but perhaps Mexico was more satisfying still, since it was confirmation we were progressing, that Canada wasn’t a fluke…”

At Silverstone last week both Alain Prost and Martin Brundle spoke with some awe of the Jordan’s showing in Mexico. “I think the Williams is the best chassis at the moment,” Alain said, “and then the Jordan…”

Brundle agreed: “Any car that can go through the Peraltada right on the gearbox of the car in front has got a serious amount of downforce.”

Suddenly, then, Jordan Grand Prix is being taken very seriously indeed, and for Andrea de Cesaris 1991 must seem like a dream. Just before I sat down with Eddie at Silverstone, testing was stopped when Andrea parked his car against a wall, but broadly his season has been impressive. In Mexico he drove perhaps the best race of his life. What miracle had Jordan worked here?

“Most of our contracts are geared to… performance-related funding, let’s put it that way. It’s always been my style to do it that way. The actual contracts are perhaps not very big, but ‘you do a good job, and you’ll be rewarded’” Eddie Jordan

“I haven’t done anything – I can’t work it out!” Jordan responds. “It’s true enough he had a serious number of accidents in the past. I mean, you only have to look at one of those Havoc films, and you’ll find 90% of it’s him!

“What I will say is that I think he feels very happy here, and Bertrand Gachot, too. I think we’ve given them a good all-round package, with a car that’s well balanced and reasonably easy to drive, and good engines from Ford. They don’t have to drive over the level of their ability to achieve results.

“The style of our team is slightly different from the norm. It’s very aggressive. I sometimes give the drivers wicked abuse! Truly. But I do it in a semi-jovial way. They know I’m serious, but I try to do it with some compassion. I insist they’re very involved with the team – that they appreciate what the guys are making and doing for them.

“I’ve spent quite a lot of time with Andrea, trying to make him understand that we, as a team, love him, if you know what I mean. I like the drivers to be my friends, first of all, but it also makes good sense. If I can get their confidence up by 10% maybe they’ll drive 1% quicker – that’s a gain I can get for free! But there’s nothing magic about it – nothing I’ve done that any other team owner in the paddock couldn’t do.”

Getting the best out of de Cesaris was also key to Jordan’s early success

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Eddie is frank about emoluments from his now numerous sponsors: “Most of our contracts are geared to… performance-related funding, let’s put it that way.” Which is to say that they pay by results. “It’s always been my style to do it that way,” he adds. “The actual contracts are perhaps not very big, but ‘you do a good job, and you’ll be rewarded’.

“As a matter of fact, it’s the same with the drivers, who are on a very high level of performance incentive. Andrea is on that system,” Jordan chuckles, “and, to be honest, he’s earning a hell of a lot more than I would ever have paid him as a retainer!”

Clearly, however, Eddie’s greatest pride is in his team, as an entity. Over time he built up a collection of people who worked well and – equally important, this – worked well together. In effect, he says, it is an F3/F3000 team that has progressed to GP racing.

“In terms of attitude and motivation,” Jordan says, “I find it hard to imagine a team much better. I’ve worked hard to keep these boys together. That was always my strategy – that, and to keep the numbers down. There’s very little fat on our team. We only employ 41 people.”

Eddie insists that he is in this for the long haul. “History is history,” he is fond of saying. “I want to talk about the present and the future – especially the future.”

So what does the future hold? No more pre-qualifying, for one thing, and this, in the second half of the season, Jordan keenly awaits.

“Pre-qualifying is something I would never ask anyone to do,” he says. “I’ve been racing 21 years, and it’s the most horrific thing I’ve come across. Once it’s finished, and you’ve made it through, you know you’re going to qualify for the race. It’s pre-qualifying that’s the killer.

Optimism started to grow and no longer having to tackle pre-qualifying was another benefit

Photo by: Sutton Images

“On the other hand, I’m delighted we were made to do it, because we’ve got out of it on our own, and I feel it’s a landmark from which the team will always gain. It’s made us stronger.

“At present I don’t feel we’re doing ourselves justice in qualifying. We can do better there, and I think we can qualifying with people like Piquet, Alesi, even Prost and Senna, we can race with them, too. We’re progressing, but what we have to do this year is finish on the podium, and I think that’s possible.”

Look further down the road, I said. “Hmmm… well, what we have to be ready for is the time this little roll stops, and there’s a downward spiral. Quite often, with teams new to F1, your first year is much better than your second, but I think we have the sort of people to cope with that.

“After that we just want to go on the way we are, doing the best job possible, as we have in the other formulae. At present we’re nowhere near what we want to achieve – we want to be World Champions. And we think, in time, it’s going to be hard to stop us…”