Emanuele Pirro, President of the Grand Prix Drivers Club :
“On Thursday morning I was shocked to hear that Eddie Jordan had died following his long fight against prostate cancer. Eddie was a unique character a bit of a racing driver, a bit of a team owner, a bit of a businessman and a bit of a musician making him a one-of-a-kind individual. The whole racing community is in mourning.
Thanks to Philip Morris and him I was able to take part in the famous Macau GP with the Marlboro Theodore racing
I raced in that classic race for the first time with a Ralt-Toyota run by West Surrey Racing and entered by Marlboro Theodore Racing.
Macau became one of my favourite races and I was to race there three times for Eddie Jordan and afterwards four more times in the Guia Race with the works BMW.
In 1985 Eddie chose me to race a Ralt RT30 Volkswagen in that event in a deal arranged with that great character from Hong Kong, Teddy Yip who was to become a Formula 1 entrant himself when he ran his Theodore Formula 1 car.
Teddy Yip had the Marlboro sponsorship franchise so the cars were entered as Eddie Jordan Racing with Marlboro Theodore Racing,
For the 1986 race I was entered alongside the Danish driver John Nielson in the two car Eddie Jordan team and had my best result at Macau finishing fourth.
My link with the team continued in 1987, when Eddie chose Johnny Herbert to race with me in his two-car team, but this time with one of Adrian Reynard’s 873 Formula 3 cars.
My racing time with him was short but since then I always considered him a dear friend”.
Eddie was always helpful and friendly but you had to get used to some of his antics and jokes both at the circuit and in normal life. He was always well organised and I have always been grateful to have been taken under his wing in those hectic days of Formula 3” .
Our Club Vice-President, Tim Schenken also drove for Eddie Jordan driving a Marlboro-sponsored Formula 3 Tiga, the successful racing car created by Tim and former Club President Howden Ganley. His teammate was Stefan Johansson.
A personal memory: Graham Gauld
You couldn’t help but like Eddie Jordan and from the moment I first met him way back when he was one of a group of Irishmen who would sail across the Irish Sea to Scotland to race their Formula Atlantics at the Ingliston circuit near Edinburgh. They were amusing and welcome visitors who would brighten up the paddock with their “craik” and their boundless enthusiasm.
By now most readers will know the basic elements of his story, his remarkable gift of persuading people to fund him even though he was greatly helped in his sponsorship deals by former Autosport correspondent Ian Phillips who became his commercial partner and completed most of the sponsorship deals.
You could not avoid Eddie’s enthusiasm for anything to do with racing and even when he was running his own Formula 3 team with sponsorship from Marlboro Ireland he was looking for new talent. I remember an occasion at the end 1978 a young Scot called Bryce Wilson had been successful with a Formula Atlantic entered by another Scottish driver, Laurence Jacobsen. Jacobsen was impressed and rented a Formula 3 Ralt-Toyota RT1 for Wilson’s first major National motor race. Eddie Jordan was also in the race driving a Ralt RT1 under his Marlboro Team Tiga banner.
In practice this 18-year-old Scot, Wilson, racing for the first time against some of the leading Formula 3 drivers, created a sensation by qualifying in 6th place a mere 1.2 seconds slower than pole man Derek Warwick.
At this Eddie Jordan rushed up to me and said “Who is this guy ?”. He was even more enthusiastic when Wilson finished 4th in the race but on this occasion, he lost out as Wilson was to sign for the Erlich team for 1979 and after just one race that year retired from motor-racing ! I believe that if he had signed for Eddie Jordan he would have matured and become a leading driver in Formula 3 for that was the kind of person Eddie Jordan was. He cared for his drivers and was a great motivator.
Formula 1 at the moment perhaps needs a few more team owners and managers with some of Eddie’s great attributes and he truly will be missed.