Eddie Jordan, the former F1 team leader, has claimed that he almost went into business with the famous Ayrton Senna.
Jordan Grand Prix’s trademark brilliant yellow was a permanent fixture on the F1 grid for 15 years once they joined the competition in 1991.
After finishing sixth in their debut season, Jordan went on to win four races in their F1 career until they were bought out by Midland in 2006, and had a number of great drivers over the years, including Rubens Barrichello, 1996 world winner Damon Hill, and seven-time champion Michael Schumacher.
However, the Irish team owner has claimed that he discussed doing business with Ayrton Senna off the track on the condition that he race for the team on it.
Jordan: ‘I offered Senna 50 percent for free’
“I offered him 50%,” he revealed on the Formula For Success podcast. I never lost contact with him, and he was the type of person who constantly wanted to know who was doing what, what was going on with your children, and where they were going.
“And I suddenly realised as a business guy because fundamentally that was in my mind, I felt how am I going to win Grand Prix? How am I going to better the team generally?
“At that stage, he had just brought me [Rubens] Barrichello so we had huge influence in Brazil and the ability of bringing cash.
“So I offered him free of charge 50% of Jordan Grand Prix, which at the time was quite a significant amount of money really but on condition that he would drive for the next two years and he would bring enough money to fund it for that time.
“We were in that particular discussion in 1994 at the beginning of the season and we know what happened at Williams, extraordinarily sad for all sorts of things.”
While Jordan never worked with Senna, his reputation lives on in the world of F1, and he was destined to have a role in the sport for a long time had it not been for the sad events at Imola in 1994.
The team is still on the grid today, now known as Aston Martin, after multiple takeovers and name changes that saw the likes of Midland, Spyker, Force India, and Racing Point enter the sport.
