Eddie Jordan slams every 2024 team for ‘scandalous’ omission in F1 first

Former F1 team owner Eddie Jordan has slated the teams for failing to put a single rookie on this year’s grid, a first in F1 history.

Last season Formula 1 welcomed four rookies onto the grid in Oscar Piastri, Logan Sargeant, Nyck de Vries, and the AlphaTauri driver’s subsequent replacement Liam Lawson.

This year there’s not one, and Jordan is fuming over it.

‘And I really blame the 10 teams…’

The man who gave Michael Schumacher his big break back in 1991, kicking off the seven-time World Champion’s F1 career at the Belgian Grand Prix, Jordan also later gave his brother Ralf his break in 1997.

That’s just two newcomers that the Jordan team owner opened the door for, at a price of course.

This year, though, for the first time in F1’s history there won’t be a single newbie on the grid.

“I am so upset,” Jordan told the Formula For Success podcast. “Honestly, I can’t tell you how upsetting this is. And I really blame the 10 teams.

“It’s scandalous. The vision [and] the foresight is negative.

“I think all of the big teams [and] all of the smaller teams, shame on those teams for not making it their business to give young blood, young talent, and us in the media something that we can grasp on and say who was the best rookie of the year.

“We can’t say that this year. It’s just wrong.”

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Felipe Drugovich should be on the grid, insists Eddie Jordan

And he believes there were at least two drivers ready to step up to a full-time drive in Lawson and Aston Martin reserve Felipe Drugovich.

It’s the latter who Jordan feels has been treated unfairly as he stormed to the 2022 Formula 2 title only to find himself spending the next two years as a reserve driver.

“One of the people that I would really be eyeing up is Liam Lawson, I think he did a good job last year,” Jordan added.

“There’s a young name that people probably aren’t aware of, he’s Brazilian and we do need a Brazilian back in F1. and he’s also Italian so Italian-Brazilian.

“So it makes all sorts of sense and that’s Felipe Drugovich.

“You know he’s been around… when you consider what he did, he won the Formula 2 championship by an absolute mile and an even bigger gap than what Oscar Piastri did.

“He’d probably be my number one choice.

“Because Brazil is a great commercial market, we saw what happened with Piquet, and Senna, and Fittipaldi, the great champions they’ve been able to produce. There’s a big history in Brazil.

“The place was swamped at one stage with absolute brilliance and to think today they have no one. So that’s who I would be going for.”

Jordan, rookies and his Ferrari ‘sponsorship’

At a time when many rookies enter the sport with financial backing, Jordan reckons there’s also money to be made off of them. Especially if you can later sell the driver to Ferrari.

“I enjoyed the young drivers,” he said. “Michael Schumacher and his brother Ralf, they were there. And even when you go back right at the beginning, 1982, I was so fortunate to give Senna his first-ever drive in Formula 3.

“I’ll never forget that because I got such a buzz out of it. It’s like a young baby being brought into the family, and you want to see it grow, and you want to see where they’re going to go to.

“And in my case, I was lucky enough to be able to sell them off one way or another to Ferrari because they were the best payers in the world.

“So I’ll always be indebted people used to ask me, what about you? What was your biggest sponsor, and I always say Ferrari, because I probably got more money out of them than I did out of any other single sponsor in my time.”

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