{"id":1099820,"date":"2022-06-23T07:44:24","date_gmt":"2022-06-23T06:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/?post_type=issue_content&p=1099820"},"modified":"2022-06-23T07:44:26","modified_gmt":"2022-06-23T06:44:26","slug":"the-best-and-worst-of-eddie-jordan","status":"publish","type":"issue_content","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/archive\/article\/august-2022\/125\/the-best-and-worst-of-eddie-jordan\/","title":{"rendered":"The best and worst of Eddie Jordan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cOne day he\u2019s a character you\u2019d drive off the end of the earth for, and the next\u2026 if you had a gun you\u2019d shoot him.\u201d That\u2019s Trevor Foster\u2019s verdict on Eddie Jordan, the man whom he worked for the longest during his 50 years in motor sport.<\/p>\n

The best of EJ explains why Jordan survived through the 1990s when the likes of Lotus, Tyrrell and Brabham faded. \u201cHe\u2019d be in from 8am until 7 or 8pm trying to get the deals in,\u201d says Foster. \u201cHe was an eternal brush salesman, something I couldn\u2019t do. He\u2019d knock on the door: \u2018Sir, would you like to buy a brush?\u2019 No, slam the door in his face. Then he\u2019d go back a week later, knock on the door and say, \u2018This brush: I\u2019ve got a better idea, it\u2019s a blue one instead of a red one.\u2019 This is how it was with chasing sponsors: he\u2019d make a pitch and they\u2019d say, \u2018We\u2019re not interested, we are going to sponsor golf or horse racing.\u2019 A month later he\u2019d be back on the phone saying, \u2018I know what you said last time, but what about this angle?\u2019 He was relentless. He\u2019d have 100 ideas a day, but couldn\u2019t always decipher the good ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n \"Damon\n
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Jordan\u2019s Damon Hil<\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

In the early F1 days, Jordan put everything on the line for his team \u2013 including his own home. Foster has never forgotten that. \u201cThe first thing he used to say to me was, \u2018How much money do we have in the bank? We pay the wages first. Forget the suppliers and the VAT man, wages first.\u2019 I always respected him for that. It was touch and go for months at the end of 1991 and the thing that saved us was the car was so good. That brought in funding from Sasol the following year. Unfortunately the damage had already been done financially and we couldn\u2019t commit to the Cosworth engine, so we had to take the Yamaha and the guys had to re-engineer the car with a bigger, longer engine. It didn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foster was tempted away by Peter Collins at Team Lotus in 1993, frustrated by his widening role as team manager and race engineer at Jordan \u2013 plus he was keen to work with Johnny Herbert again. But it\u2019s a period he won\u2019t dwell upon. \u201cAfter I left Lotus I helped out Richard Dutton at Fortec with race engineering for a season, then out of the blue I got a call from Eddie asking if I\u2019d come back. While I\u2019d been away he\u2019d split the roles, like I\u2019d been asking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foster was present through the Benson & Hedges years: winning the first race with Damon Hill at Spa in 1998, and working with drivers like Ralf Schumacher, Jarno Trulli and Heinz-Harald Frentzen.\u00a0\u201cBy 2001, because we\u2019d worked so closely with each other, it became like a divorce,\u201d says Foster. \u201cI didn\u2019t agree with the direction Eddie was taking the team. It was his company, his team and his choice, but as a senior member if you disagree with where it\u2019s going you have the right to walk away, which is what happened. We didn\u2019t fall out as such, but we disagreed more than we\u2019d ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n \"POR\"\n
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From left: Eddie Jordan, Foster and Andrea de Cesaris, Interlagos, 1991<\/p>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

Foster isn\u2019t defined by his time at Jordan, but it\u2019s the team he remains most associated with and there\u2019s plenty of pride in what was achieved. \u201cWhen you put your heart and soul into this job, you\u2019ve got to really want it,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not talking just about in the good times. Even when you haven\u2019t got the best car or drivers you still have to put everything into it. If you\u2019ve got a really talented driver or engineer they can carry you through. When you have someone not at that level you have to work even harder to make up for the shortfall.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"author":747,"featured_media":1099825,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[118712],"tags":[34539,34093,199,115471],"issue_decade":[122153],"issue_year":[129434],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/1099820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1099820"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/1099820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1099835,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/1099820\/revisions\/1099835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1099825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1099820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1099820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1099820"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=1099820"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=1099820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}