Two flamboyant personalities and kindred spirits, Eddie Jordan and Bernie Ecclestone struck up an enduring friendship when the Irishman formed his own Formula 1 team in the early 1990s
Bernie Ecclestone has said he won’t be present at the funeral of his “irreplaceable” friend Eddie Jordan. The Irish former Formula 1 team owner and pundit has died after a battle with bladder and prostate cancer, aged 76.
Jordan’s family confirmed the tragic news with a statement on Thursday. He died with his family at his bedside at his home in Cape Town, South Africa, almost a year on from his cancer diagnosis. He confirmed last December that the disease had spread “aggressively” to his spine and pelvis.
Tributes soon began to pour in from all corners of the F1 world. And now the sport’s former supremo Ecclestone, a close friend of Jordan’s for more than 30 years, has added his voice to those who already miss one of sport’s great characters.
“I am very, very sad because Eddie was a special guy,” he told the Daily Mail. “Tell me which team principal today is like him. You can’t give me one because there isn’t one. They don’t make them like that now. We will never replace him in Formula 1.”
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Ecclestone, 94, went on to recall a detail from his last conversation with Jordan, adding: “He had been ill for some months. I last heard he was given two diagnoses by different doctors. One told him he was in trouble and another that all his problems had gone away. Now we know the answer, unfortunately.”
While they got on well, they were not always on the same side of every deal. In his capacity as the executive of F1, he helped Benneton to snatch a young Michael Schumacher from Jordan’s grasp in 1991 after his Belgian Grand Prix debut with the latter’s team.
It was nothing personal – Schumacher was the obvious next big star of the sport and Ecclestone felt the more stable home Benneton would provide was a safer bet than the Jordan Grand Prix team that had only just begun to compete in the sport, and on a shoestring budget.
Ecclestone recalled his conversations with Jordan about that situation at the time as he paid further tribute to his friend, and explained why he will not be among the mourners at the Irishman’s funeral. “With Eddie, you always knew where you stood,” he added. “We could joke and laugh at each other. We very were close in a strange way. We trusted each other.
“We stole Schumacher from him, telling him Michael would be going to Benetton in 1992, and we discussed this through a whole night session. You learn a lot about people in circumstances like those. He was fighting to keep his driver but was happy if he got a few dollars in exchange for Michael going. Eddie was always looking for a few dollars in a completely nice way.
“I would have given him an open cheque because I trusted him totally. I won’t be going to his funeral. I don’t go to funerals. I may not go to mine. He certainly won’t go to mine. So, it’s all fair. It always was with Eddie.”
