Jordan

Wheeler-dealer Eddie Jordan was Formula Atlantic champion in his native Ireland and a promising Formula Three driver before he set up Eddie Jordan Racing in 1981. The team came very close to taking the British Formula Three crown in 1983 with Martin Brundle as their driver, after a season-long battle with Ayrton Senna. One of his drivers did win this title, though: Johnny Herbert in 1987. Moving up into Formula 3000, the partnership continued in 1988, but Herbert was injured at Brands Hatch.

Jordan fancied himself as a talent spotter and, after Jean Alesi had been through a tough Formula 3000 campaign in 1988, Eddie offered him a drive in his team in 1989 and Alesi repaid him by winning the title in style.

Jordan then expanded from his Silverstone industrial unit to new premises across the road and formed Jordan Grand Prix for 1991, with Gary Anderson designing the 191, which turned out to be one of the cars of the year. Bertrand Gachot and Andrea de Cesaris were Jordan's drivers, but the season was disrupted when Gachot sprayed CS gas in a London taxi driver's face and ended up in jail.

In his place, Jordan gave Michael Schumacher his debut at Spa. Sadly, Jordan couldn't keep hold of Schumacher, who was spirited away to Benetton before the next race.

Jordan had Ford HB engines in 1991 and the team was regularly embarrassing Benetton, the Ford works team. With no guarantee of works engines for 1992, Jordan did a deal with Yamaha, but the V12 was a disaster and the two companies ended the agreement after just one year.

In 1993, Jordan used Brian Hart's new V10 and signed Rubens Barrichello. The Brazilian showed himself to be at home in Formula One almost immediately, equalling Jordan's best fourth-place result. Ivan Capelli, Thierry Boutsen, Marco Apicella and Emanuele Naspetti all drove the second car, before Eddie Irvine did a tremendous job to score a point on his debut with Jordan in Japan.

For 1994, Jordan kept his pairing of promising young drivers, although Irvine had something of a bad-boy reputation, earning a three-race ban for an incident in Brazil. Barrichello finished sixth in the championship, earning the team's first podium in the Pacific GP at Aida and finishing fourth four times. He also scored the team's first pole in wet-dry conditions at Spa.

Jordan stood out behind F1's "big four" - Williams, Ferrari, Benetton and McLaren - and his company earned itself a three-year works engine deal with Peugeot. Promising in qualifying in 1995, Jordan should have profited, but reliability was poor.

Jordan signed Giancarlo Fisichella and Ralf Schumacher for 1997, with the Italian finishing second at Spa. Damon Hill replaced Fisichella for 1998 and gave Jordan its first win, at Spa, helping the team to a career-best fourth in the Constructors' Cup. They advanced to third overall in 1999, with Heinz-Harald Frentzen winning at both Magny-Cours and Monza, but fell to sixth in 2000 as Frentzen and Jarno Trulli suffered from poor reliability. The arrival of works Honda engines didn't produce a leap forward in 2001, merely a marked tail-off in form.

They continued to dwindle in 2002, with Fisichella managing just a trio of fifth places as they slipped from fifth overall to sixth. Then came 2003, using Ford engines, with Fisichella boosting the increasingly underfinanced team with a shock victory in the accident-shortened Brazilian GP. Even this wasn't awarded until the following week because of confusion over the count-back rule. Such was Jordan's loss of form, that even with points now being awarded all the way back to eighth, Fisichella only scored once more, finishing seventh in the penultimate race.

Talks of take-over bids and financial salvation continued, and it came as little surprise that the team could only finish 2004 in ninth place, despite the sterling efforts of Nick Heidfeld.

Eddie sold out to Alex Shnaider and his Midland concern at the end of 2004 and stood down, although the team raced on as Jordan through 2005 before being renamed as Midland F1 for 2006 (see page 210). The high point of its final season in a yellow livery came when Tiago Monteiro and Narain Karthikean finished third and fourth respectively in the US GP - the race from which seven teams withdrew just before the start.

Reproduced from The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Formula One published by Carlton Books