Search goes on for that winning banker

THE exchange usually went like this.

THE exchange usually went like this.

"Anyone seen Eddie?"

"No, he's probably down in the kitchen."

"What's he doing?"

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"Making phone calls."

"Who's he talking to?"

"Dunno. Somebody about motor racing."

In 1977, the basement kitchen was Eddie Jordan's office. His colleagues in the Bank of Ireland branch in Dublin's Ballsbridge used to wonder about what he did down there. Eddie wasn't making the coffee.

They cashed the travellers cheques for the Americans flooding across the road from Jury's Hotel. Eddie spoke to people on the phone. Eddie did his own thing.

If he had stayed at it. If he'd grafted. If he'd hit the books, done his exams, put in his time and kept his nose clean, Eddie could have been a branch manager. He could have been earning £28,000 a year.

Now no one asks, "anyone seen Eddie?" Eddie's where the cameras are pointed. Sitting on the $5 million racing car, with Ralf Schumacher and Giancarlo Fisichella riding shotgun, Eddie's cruising in Spaghetti Western style from the back of a smoke filled stage.

We're in the ballroom of the Hilton Hotel in London's Park Lane. Young female `helpers' in racing garb are offering around champagne and packets of fags. A freeloader might die here with few regrets. Eddie, with his tan and pointy locks, his common touch and measured Irish Blarney, steps out of the fog and into the spotlight to tell us that, happily, he has broken away from his moorings.

"I'll never forget it," he announces. Maurice Hamilton (the Observer's motor racing correspondent) said to me years ago. He said, the day you launch your car in a glitzy London hotel is the day you lose your character. By then you will also have joined the establishment."

Jordan has had to expand. Jordan is seeking to become part of the establishment, looking to deliver on this year's pre season rhetoric.

He's in confessional mode. And, as usual, he's one step ahead. Eddie gets it out before it can be thrown back at him.

"I haven't felt the buzz for the last couple of years and I felt it needed change. I was wrong about Jordan being no more than 100 people. Jordan needed to get bigger."

In truth the size of Jordan Racing was academic, but the buzz, why did it die?

In 1990, Jordan Grand Prix was founded. In 1991, the team came fifth in the championship. Eleventh, equal tenth, a sixth and two more fifths came his way. The reality is that Jordan's first year in Formula Grand Prix has never been bettered.

Somewhere along the line the buzz fizzled out and the lustre of mid table skirmishes dulled the senses. Somewhere along the circuit people stopped believing that it might be a Jordan coming around the chicane in first position.

Now Benson and Hedges have filled the Jordan team's pockets but Peugeot, the engine suppliers, seem to have spat and slapped hands with Alain Prost. The former Fl champion, who it has been strongly rumoured recently bought the Ligier team, offers a serious challenge when Jordan's exclusive contract with Peugeot expires at the end of this season. A French icon and French engine. It makes sense.

With last year's World champion Damon Hill and the Arrows team coming on stream, too the middle ground of Formula One has become an intriguing and more crowded battle ground.

"I've written to him privately. I've welcomed Alain Prost because I think Formula One needs him. I'm a friend of his. Whatever way he comes, I want him to be there privately," he says.

Jordan's corporate wing may have different opinions, but the strategy has changed, the car has changed and the ambitions have had to change. The £140,000 launch was the baptism, a deliberate break from the past, a strengthening of the new faith.

"My feeling was that investment in technology would be repaid more quickly than investment in drivers. We needed two drivers who were not cut up in the previous politics of Formula One, who had not been indoctrinated by it."

It is a gamble. The "fireworks" of 21 year old Ralf Schumacher and 24 year old Fisichella or the experience of the jettisoned Martin Brundle are ongoing points of debate for onlookers. Should Jordan have hedged it with a blend of driving ability or was he right to bring in the talented rookies? Either way, he has made his bed.

"The next jump is that we have to attack at the very front of races and take a different view of everything. Jordan has continually proved that its best results have come from young drivers."

Perhaps Eddie is learning. He's refused to say that it's the best car ever. He knows he's said it before at other launches. But this time he's refusing publicly to say it's the best car ever. Still, he believes that it is the best car.

The conversion of others will have to wait until the Australian Grand Prix in March. Until the Jordan team stands toe to toe with Williams and Ferrari.

"We don't know yet how the car will perform until we race, but Gary Anderson (technical director) has said that simulations show that on a track like Silverstone we should be 1.7 to 1.8 seconds faster than before. Gary wouldn't say that in public if he could not deliver," says Jordan.

Clearly there is a lot of goodwill in the sport for the Jordan team to succeed. In reality he has already succeeded to a degree. The goodwill, however, needs the success to drive it along some more. Otherwise the enthusiasm wanes.

Eddie smiles and jabs a finger into the crowd of several hundred potential media critics, perhaps in the knowledge that a bank manager's annual salary wouldn't pay for his car's tyres over a long weekend.

"I see McLaren have their normal spy here... hello Crispin," he says. Crispin waves back. Eddie's still doing his own thing.

Johnny Watterson

Johnny Watterson

Johnny Watterson is a sports writer with The Irish Times