I still remember when Eddie Jordan and I met at the end of 1986 at a motorsport awards dinner. He approached me and asked if anyone had spoken to me about driving for them the following year. I told him no one had and so on the back of a napkin, before the end of the awards, we agreed to come together for 1987 when we would go on to win the Formula 3 British Championship together.
I still believe if he hadn’t given me that chance in Formula 3, I’m not quite sure I’d have had that success or would have got to Formula One without him.
During that year, I got to know the real Eddie Jordan. You can see the Eddie that was on TV and when he was a team owner but when I went down to Sotogrande, to his place in Spain with his family that we became close. He was just a brilliant host and he made all his drivers feel very, very comfortable within the walls of Eddie Jordan Racing as it was at the time and of course then later with the F1 team, when he brought in Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill amongst many others.
What was also impossible to ignore was his work ethic; looking back, it’s no surprise that he achieved what he achieved. His work ethic was continuous, all day and sometimes, literally, all night. There was always a deal to be done and there was always this passion for it.
We won together in 1987 and that gave him more drive to get himself through to his ultimate dream, which was Formula One. But he grafted for it, it wasn’t given to him on a plate, he had to go out there and find that sponsorship that he needed to keep racing.
When we did Formula 3000 together in 1988, at the first race we had one sponsor on the car and it was plain white, nothing else on it. I got pole position and that evening Eddie phoned up Duncan Lee, who was head of Camel cigarettes at the time. Duncan wasn’t interested in sponsoring us, so Eddie banged on until basically Duncan went: “Okay, you can have a meeting on Tuesday”.
Eddie went away to another team, got a Camel sticker, stuck it on the side of the car on the Saturday night and I went out and won, so he had a photo of me winning the race, which he took to the meeting on Tuesday and got the Camel sponsorship for the next two years.
So it was the graft and the thought process. Having the meeting is one thing but then to think: “Right, I get a sticker, stick it on, if we win the race, Camel’s all over the car”.
That was what was so wonderful about the wheeler-dealer side of him. He was always thinking out of the box, always trying to think of new ways with his team to be able to promote himself, the brands that he had on board, his partners and that was very refreshing at that time and a lot of people have taken on board what he did in that early nineties period.
His strength was also in the team he had chosen. When they were in the factory he made sure that he and they were on the same page and there was a togetherness. Everybody had a free and open situation in their particular jobs and that got the best out of people on that limited budget. He had a lot of trust, Eddie looked after everybody and that just gave them a really good feel and there was a lot of love, because that was his type of character that he had, he was never, ever shying away from his emotions. He’d be hard when he needed to be but he also knew very well that he needed to keep everybody motivated, happy in the job that they were doing, so there was respect, both ways.
Jordan F1 were the underdogs, they were the ones that were there or thereabouts and then got very close to winning the drivers and constructors’ championship with Heinz-Harald Frentzen in 1999. They were the underdogs everybody loved because there was just something about them that drew you in.
Look at the pictures of the British Grand Prix in 1995 after I won. Eddie had the truck with his band, Nick Mason was on the drums, Eddie was on the drums, Damon was playing guitar, me doing tambourine as that was the only rhythmic thing I could sort of play. It wasn’t Formula One but the fun and the people that it dragged in after the race was brilliant and he loved it.
He loved that ability to enjoy what he was doing and the limelight that went with it all. That was why he was so refreshing, so very charismatic and the energy that he brought into the paddock is something that we are still benefiting from today. Eddie was one of the last of those successful characters who came in and he was probably one of the very last team owners who was also running the team, very, very involved with all the decision making that was going on. The way that he did it made it that much more special. He achieved so, so much with not the biggest budget on the grid and that is something that earned respect. There’s a lot of respect for what Eddie achieved on track just as there’s a lot of respect for what Eddie did off track with his TV career.
I will miss him massively. I think we will all miss him, to be honest. We all have memories in different ways of what he was like but it was the energy that he gave all of us at the end of the day. He was one of the biggest characters we had in the paddock and his popularity is going to live on for sure.