People

Paul Jordan

Paul Jordan is no relation to his namesake Eddie Jordan but he credits the Irishman with having given him direction in life, after drifting for several years. Coming from a broken home, Paul left school at 15 and did all sorts of jobs, working as a scaffold, a butcher and even a cleaner. At the age of 21 he found himself a job as sales rep for a motorcycle accessory company, selling bits and pieces to motorcycle dealers.

The company was called Oxford Fairings and it ran a privately-entered motorcycle team which employed former multiple World Motorcycling Champion Phil Read. Young Jordan was asked if he would like to help the team for the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy - the famous TT - and he went along as a gofer. He loved it and spent the rest of the year on the team. The following year he moved to Honda Great Britain's factory team to work with an Australian rider called Wayne Gardner in the British 500cc Championship and in the F1 bikes series which existed at the time. The team won both and the TT - thanks to efforts of Gardner and Joey Dunlop.

After a couple of years Jordan moved on to work for Tom Walkinshaw's Dunlop Auto Racing Tires company and through this found himself working with the TWR Austin River Vitesse touring car team in France with drivers Jean-Louis Schlesser and Marc Duez. The team manager of that operation then moved to the German ATS F1 team - and Jordan went with him to work as a gofer and mechanic.

No-one ever worked for ATS for very long and so in 1985 Jordan was back at Honda GB with Wayne Gardner again before he joined the Onyx F3000 team. It was through this job that he met Eddie Jordan - who had entered F3000 that year. He joined Jordan for the rest of that season but then went off to America to work with Eric Lang (whom he had met through Eddie in F3) in American Formula Atlantic. The drifting, however, continued with a return to British F3 the following year and then another season in America with Ted Titus in Formula Atlantic.

In 1990 Paul joined the Jordan organization as commercial manager and worked on the Barclay EJR F3000 team which ran Damon Hill and Vincenzo Sospiri in 1991. He then moved on to Jordan Grand Prix. In 1992 he teamed up with ex-Williams, McLaren and TWR marketing man Richard West to form their own F3000 team, European Technique, but it was impossible to find money and in 1994 Jordan returned to Jordan GP to be marketing manager. He became sponsorship manager in 1996 but quit the team to join British American Racing in 1999. That job lasted only a year before he joined Benetton. In 2001 he left the team and set up his own business, a motor racing head-hunting agency, but at the start of 2003 returned to the sport as marketing head of Minardi.