Working for Eddie Jordan: 'He shut the door in my face. I've worked there ever since'

Stevenson soon found out how Jordan tried to get the best out of his employees.

“I was only a young kid, and I always felt like Eddie was picking on me,” he recalls. “He’d ask me what I was doing every single day, he’d ask me what my plan was every single day. ‘What are you going to do that’s better? How are you going to make the cars go faster?’ And I found it quite tough.

“As you grow up you learn to understand these things. What Eddie was actually doing and what he did with everybody, he was finding the best way to motivate me. And with Eddie, he knew if he motivated you, he got the most out of you, so he got the most value.

“It also meant the team was as strong as possible. And the people that always hung around the team, stayed with the team and worked with Eddie, were those that could react and could dig deeper and improve themselves.

“Some would say because he didn’t want to pay the big bucks, he’d hire people, and he’d mould them.”

“He had this ability to spot potential, and not only in drivers, but in staff as well. Mechanics, designers, commercial staff, press, he would spot potential in them, and he would extract that potential. Some would say because he didn’t want to pay the big bucks, he’d hire people, and he’d mould them.

“He would make you feel more confident in yourself and a stronger person. And to this day I still get up every day trying to do a better job than I did the day before.”

Anyone who spent any time around Jordan would inevitably hear the catchphrase “I made you!” intended to make people remember that he’d helped them somewhere along the way. The jokey catchphrase had some basis in fact.

Eddie Jordan the manager

“You look back on it now, and he was right, absolutely right,” says Stevenson. “He was very often underestimated for his man management skills. He was always involved in the interview process, he was always involved in the salary negotiations. And when people were leaving he’d always do an exit interview, although we didn’t call them that back then.

“These are all things now that are very commonplace, but Eddie was doing those a long time before race teams had any HR departments. He knew how to manage people, and he knew how to build teams, which is why from very humble beginnings, he was able to take on the world’s best.”

So where did those management skills come from?

“I think it was just natural. He motivated the room. You would see it. He would enter a room, and he would change the whole atmosphere in that room. That was just part of his personality, he was able to extract the best from everybody. Not everybody got on with him, but everybody had to raise their game.”

In 1991 Jordan GP built its first F1 car. The tiny team would make a huge impact with the iconic 191, and finish fifth in the World Championship.

“It was all my dreams come true,” says Stevenson. “All I ever wanted to do from a young age was work in F1. And fortunately through hard work and Eddie’s ambition, I was able to get there earlier than I was expecting, and I was lucky enough to do it with a great team.

“It was tough, but you just didn’t notice it, you were doing something that you really enjoyed, that you were passionate about. Eddie only hired people who were competitive. Everything you were doing was with a competitive nature in your mind. So the more you were asked to do, the more you were enjoying it.”

The biggest story around the team that year was Michael Schumacher’s debut at Spa and subsequent move to Benetton – which meant that he didn’t end up driving the hopeless Yamaha-powered 192.

“What happened, happened, and probably for the good of the sport!” says Stevenson. “1992 wasn’t our most successful year ever, it was an extremely challenging year. But we fought our way through it, and we managed to score a point in the last race in Adelaide. And that’s the way we went racing – it was never give up.”

“We could feel it coming,” says Stevenson. “It hadn’t been a great year for us, but around Silverstone we did some pretty big updates to the car. Eddie had seen that we weren’t delivering. He was obviously getting pressure from the sponsors and the partners.

“In Monaco he called an emergency meeting, and he really laid the law down. Again, he showed he was a true leader. He took control, he took responsibility, and he changed the way that we were doing things. We found some more performance, and three or four races later we were challenging for podiums and wins.

“In ‘99 we were in with a shout of the World Championship. Who would have thought that in such a short time? And then in 2000 the car was so fast, but we just couldn’t get the reliability. So quite often we would qualify very high up on the grid, but we just couldn’t finish the races.”

‘Eddie was always top dog’

In those years the team expanded quickly — possibly too quickly — and Jordan had to adapt.

“The team was getting bigger and the structure was getting bigger,” says Stevenson. “And with that probably came a few more egos. But we had to grow to remain competitive.

“If you do the same thing, you stand still, and if you stand still in F1, you’re going to go nowhere, you’re only going to go backwards. So we had to expand. But with that, you get some pretty big personalities turn up who want to be the top dog.

“But Eddie was never going to let that happen. As the team grew and these people come in, he learned to stand his ground. I’m not going to name any names, but there were people fighting for control. In our eyes, there was only one person that we were working for, and the guy who was our boss.”

Eddie the dealmaker

Jordan was also one of the first team owners to seek investment from a financial institution.

“Warburg Pincus came in,” says Stevenson. “That was a big thing, because we then had investors that we had to report to. It’s very, very commonplace now, but Eddie was one of the first to bring that in, because he had a background in banking. He knew how that worked.

“I think he structured it very well. We had a board, we were reporting back to shareholders, we were run very professionally. One of the weaknesses in other teams was they underestimated just how smart Eddie was.

“He knew how to run a company, he knew how to finance a company, and putting that together with how competitive he was, and how much he loved motor sport, you underestimated him at your peril.”

Crucial to Jordan’s success was EJ’s relationship with his commercial boss, Ian Phillips. They formed a very effective team.

“He absolutely needed Ian,” Stevenson admits. “The experience that Ian brought with him, and the calmness – you had the chaos and drive from Eddie, but Ian was there to make sure we were real. Without Ian, we wouldn’t have made it.

“Ian was instrumental from day one in ensuring the success of the team. He had more F1 experience than Eddie did at the time, so he was there to share that experience and help guide the team in the right direction.”

Jordan was an ace salesman, but sometimes Phillips had to rein in his enthusiasm.

“Ian learned that from Bernie Ecclestone,” says Stevenson. “Bernie’s famous line was always, ‘Once you’ve sold the car, shut up.’ Maybe sometimes with Eddie when the deal was across the line, he got a bit too excited. He was always trying to push it a bit more.

“The other famous line that was, if you buy a suit off Eddie Jordan, don’t expect the pockets to be included! And he was great at that. He would sell a deal and then make a bigger deal off the back of it. There was no one better.

“He was also brilliant with drivers. He had been a driver and at a really high standard. And he always insisted on having a little chat with the guys one-on-one in their cars on the grid. We had no idea what he was saying to them. They probably couldn’t even hear him!

“But a little tap on the shoulder, and away they’d go and try and do their best. He would talk to drivers a lot. We’d joke about it, but I think they had a lot of respect for him, because he knew what he was talking about.”

As Benson and Hedges scaled back its involvement and a Vodafone deal didn’t materialise the team’s on-track form suffered in 2003 and 2004.

“It was a shame that the money dried up when it did,” says Stevenson. “They were tough years. The sport had become incredibly expensive. And if you weren’t backed by a major manufacturer, you were struggling. The manufacturers were pumping in huge amounts of money, and as a private team, we just couldn’t keep up.

“Eddie had spoken to some of the manufacturers, and they’d seen what we were capable of, but what they wanted to do was take over. Eddie was saying you can only have my company if I’m still in charge, because he was a very proud man, and he loved what he was doing. And I think that’s why we couldn’t attract the manufacturers to come in and back us.”

“He said, ‘I’ll make sure that each and every one of you has a job’, and he did”

Stevenson insists that Jordan never became disillusioned: “I never saw that, right up to the last year when he was running the team. In China in 2004 he stood up in front of all the guys, and he could not have been more passionate about how he wanted things to continue, and how he wanted the team to grow and be successful.

“He promised everybody that the team would not fold, that was always important to him. Lots of teams did in those years. He said, ‘I’ll make sure that each and every one of you has a job’, and he did.

“As it was, things didn’t work out. He had to sell, which was his decision. It was his team. No one else could tell him what to do. It was very sad.”

In early 2005 Jordan handed the reins to Russian-Canadian businessman Alex Schnaider and his Midland organisation.

“It was really emotional,” says Stevenson. “The deal was done very quickly, and the guys from Midland walked in. Eddie was allowed to say goodbye to the staff, and it was a really emotional time. He stood in front of us all. He couldn’t finish his sentence, he waved and walked off.

“That was a very sad day. But he’d done the right thing. He’d secured everybody’s job. He was smart enough to realise that if he hadn’t done it at that time, we could have been closing the doors, and everybody would be out of work. So he made the decision for the team. And for that, I’ll be forever grateful.”

Stevenson recalls that EJ made only one return visit to the original factory: “He came back once with Channel 4 and did a bit of a piece. We’d changed the place massively. There were a lot of mezzanine floors and new offices and false walls, and he didn’t recognise it at all. But he walked round, and a lot of people within the company greeted him.”

The story wasn’t quite over. In 2024 when Adrian Newey decided to leave Red Bull he engaged Jordan as his manager in order to help him find a new home. While the media talk was mostly of Ferrari, Stevenson quietly asked EJ to do all he could to steer Newey towards Aston Martin.

With a little persuasion from Lawrence Stroll, it worked, and Jordan helped to give his former team what turned out to be the best possible parting gift. When Newey’s deal was announced he visited Aston’s new facility on his team’s former site for the last time.

“When he came back in in September the buzz around the factory was fantastic again,” says Stevenson. “He just he had that ability to lift people’s emotions. And we had people queuing up to come and shake his hand and give him a hug.”