A tale of two F1 bosses.
In 1981 I started working with Eddie Jordan. We had been neighbours at Silverstone for a couple of years in some of the very first workshop rental units. I’d been looking after the Brazilian Ribeiro brothers and he had his F3 car there.
Eddie had decided he’d probably be a better wheeler dealer and team manager than a driver after only modest success in F3. So, we teamed up to form Eddie Jordan Racing. Despite the court jester external persona, Eddie is seriously shrewd and clever. How else do you become head of securities at the bank of Ireland in your twenties, run a successful F1 team and escape the ‘sharkspool’ with millions in the bank?
What Eddie knew most about, given his background, was how to borrow money. In fact, during the Eddie Jordan Racing era he actually ‘owned’ the Northampton branch of the Allied Irish Bank. They daren’t pull the plug on his borrowing or the branch would go down. It came as no real surprise to me that the Branch manager became Financial director of Jordan F1 in 1990!
In ’81 we ran FF and an F3 car for whoever had some money or whoever Eddie could find money for.
By ’82 we were established enough to compete in a whole season of F3 with James Weaver and a pair of FF’s as well. Eddie sorted a deal with Yokohama that we would get free tyres some travel cost to represent them in European round races. We managed to win each of the rounds we entered in Europe. With James driving and the ridiculously sticky tyres we had a winning and, better still in Eddie’s eyes, a paying combination. The car sat under the podium at Nogaro after winning the race and after the Champagne it took 5 of us to push the car away as it lifted the tarmac stuck to the tyres. The tyres were that sticky!
It wasn’t an easy time and we had to wait until Yokohama agreed to pay for the next race before we could move on the Jarama in Spain….to win that one.
Eddie as always on the look out for quick drivers and one guy who was blitzing the field in FF2000 was a certain Senna de Silva. He was invited to come and try our F3 car at Silverstone. James had put the car on pole the weekend before so Ayrton knew he was testing a quick car, and I became the first person to strap Senna in an F3 car. He was using James’s seat and so we used a couple of sheets of foam carpet underlay behind him to get a comfortable (but temporary!) driving position.
On his very first run in an F3 car Ayrton equalled James’s pole time within 15 mins and then proceeded to tell us what he needed to go quicker. He said the aero was great, but we needed to find more mechanical front grip in slower turns…..
I still have the lap sheets of that day.
The following year he was the opposition as he had chosen to take his Brazilian backing to WSR as they had already been British F3 champions 3 times.
Eddie agreed to run the talented but underfunded Martin Brundle. Martin had a season of F3 and a couple of wins behind him, but had lost his BP backing to the guy who had got closest to Senna in the their FF2000 year, Calvin Fish now a very well-known motorsport commentator in the US.
Martin and Eddie set about finding some money to allow us to compete and Martin got a few thousand from his mentor Tom Walkinshaw in the form of a GPA helmet deal for which Tom was the importer. Eddie didn’t like the idea of going to meet Tom, so as the Race Engineer (!) I was dispatched to pick up a cheque from Kidlington. That was my first ever meeting with Tom in his office and I would be handed a nice large cheque. As is turned out, it would not be my last.
The first nine races of 1983 were painful. Each one we were beaten into 2nd place by Senna, but Martin and I were learning more about the car and each other.
Then came the combined British and European round in June at Silverstone where we both decided to forgo British points and go for overall victory on European tyres.
This was the turning point of the season. We had the advantage of knowing the tyres from the previous year and Martin grabbed the opportunity with both hands. He took pole and won the race, Ayrton crashed trying to keep up.
Qualy results. I would go on to work with 11 of the listed drivers here over the next few years.
That form would be repeated over next races until we actually lead the championship on points going into the final round.
The final round saw Ayrton win and grab the championship, but it’s a complete book’s worth of information to explain why.
In fact, they’ve made a great film of that season. Worth a look if you are interested in the whole story.
or
Watch Senna vs Brundle Online | Vimeo On Demand
I did another two years with Eddie by which time he was running 3 teams. F3000, British F3 and European F3. I was engineering for both F3 and 3000 and finding that with ‘pay’ drivers it was difficult to deliver the results I craved.
I’d been made a director of EJ Management by then which was just beginning to take off, but eventually I was persuaded to join TWR Jaguar by Martin.
The mad Paddy and Major Tom a few years later
At TWR all the drivers were being paid to drive so the performance of the car in a racing situation was the major criteria. It was incredibly hard work but the success that it could bring became almost addictive.
I was lucky to be surrounded by a really hungry team and some great drivers. In Tom’s eyes wins were what mattered and I got a bonus with each win, but absolutely nothing for any minor placings. Suited me just fine, and I was able to return the faith Martin had shown in me with a World Sportscar Championship, and wins at Le Mans and Daytona which went some way to make up for F3 back in 1983.
Tom was able to take me into a whole new road car world with the XJ220 project where I was able to learn a whole new set of skills.
Which real petrol head would not want the opportunity to develop the worlds then fastest road car?
The gulf between racers and road car people was brought home to me the very first day I sat behind my new desk.
My certification manger’s first question was to ask if we should hold a ‘worse case’ meeting, something unheard of in motorsport! You just had to get it right as the time frames simply didn’t move.
The next shock was driving a rough prototype, finding the gear ratios all wrong and being told I could have a new set in ‘about 4 months’ I was used to a ratio change in about 15 mins……
The car was going to go like a race car, and I had to apply some race car principles to the prototype builds and testing to get the car to engineering sign off by the end of 1991. I brought in a ‘Key worker’ for each of the 5 prototype cars for testing and had some of my racing number one mechanics come and join me to do the job.
If I look petrified here its because I'm driving the only running car of it's type virtually underneath the tailgate of a photographer's Range Rover at 50mph with zero visibility. Much more scary than driving the car at 200mph for the very first time.
Much of the cars basic testing was done at the Millbrook test facility near Bedford and I would regularly drive cars over to and from Bloxham just south of Banbury.
Tom would often drive the cars to check on progress....and enjoy himself!
Eddie Jordan was just moving in to his new factory at Silverstone which I really wanted to see, and he really wanted to see this road car I was playing with.
As Silverstone is almost ‘on the way’ to Millbrook, I dropped in one morning to see his new facility. Eddie, of course, wanted a go in the car. He asked if we could take it back to his old workshop to show designer Gary Anderson. I agreed and Eddie drove sensibly until we were at the main entrance. He them ‘signed’ the entrance road with a huge pair of 345 size ‘11s’ which tended to announce our arrival!
The following day I had a message from Tom’s secretary to ask where all the development cars had been yesterday. It appears that someone had told Tom that they thought they heard and saw one of his new cars at the Silverstone circuit.
Little did I know that Tom was actually chairing a meeting of the BRDC at the time of the offence, right on the old entrance to the circuit…..
I made a list of where all the cars were that day and fortunately nobody thought to verify the Millbrook check-in times, or else I might have had some explaining to do!
