Ferrari completely overhauled their driver lineup heading into 1996, bringing in Michael Schumacher. For the second seat, they signed Eddie Irvine, a driver who had previously raced for the Jordan team. However, Irvine’s signing proved to be somewhat complex for the Scuderia, thanks to the involvement of his manager and former boss, Eddie Jordan.
Jordan was in the perfect position to negotiate terms about Irvine’s move to Ferrari. He went over to Budapest to recommend then-Ferrari team principal, Jean Todt, to take Irvine to replace the outgoing Gerhard Berger.
After that initial meeting, when Jordan actually went to negotiate, there was one element of the contract that he didn’t agree with—the infamous team orders clause. Even though ’96 was going to be Schumacher’s first season at Ferrari, Todt and Co. were looking to prioritize him and sign Irvine as a number two. Jordan, quite understandably, wasn’t going to agree with this.
“My argument was, why should he do that [move out of Schumacher’s way]? And then you not pay him the points money that he could’ve had, and then they started to look at each other and I said ‘Well, I think I’ve got them a little bit here,'” the late Jordan team owner, once said in the Formula for Success podcast. However, he had a clever solution to tackle this situation.
“I was trying to make the point it’s grossly unfair and it’s immoral to actually ask somebody to do something as a favor and then penalize him for not getting those points money,” he added before revealing that he demanded the same amount of points money for Irvine that Schumacher was getting.
28 JUNE 1998:
Michael Schumacher and Eddie Irvine secure Ferrari their first 1-2 since 1990
#OnThisDay #F1 pic.twitter.com/neSJDu7Mp2— Formula 1 (@F1) June 28, 2017
It was a smart move, as he backed Irvine to be a talented driver, having watched him race for his team from 1993 to 1995. However, Ferrari had another deal to sort out due to Irvine still being under contract with Jordan—they had to buy out the final year of his agreement.
Irvine’s Jordan contract buyout
The Irishman revealed that Ferrari did “pay him handsomely” for that contract buy-out. However, it turned out to be a bit expensive for him as well, courtesy of Irvine’s cleverness.
The British former driver was a smart operator, per Jordan. So, on top of that Ferrari contract he was getting to be Schumacher’s teammate, he also figured out the money his former team owner was going to make out of his remaining one-year contract.
Jordan revealed, “He nicked a very significant amount of that money for himself.” Naturally, being his manager besides being his team boss at Jordan, the Irish businessman did not have much scope to ruin his rapport with Irvine.
After all, the duo had been working closely on and off the track, negotiating this deal with Ferrari, which sorted out Irvine’s future. For the next four seasons, Irvine did a decent job as Schumacher’s teammate, even stepping up to lead Ferrari’s title charge in 1999 when the German was injured.
Unfortunately, he didn’t win the championship, finishing two points behind Mika Hakkinen. The next year, he left the Maranello-based outfit for Jaguar.
