Explained: How Eddie Jordan became Adrian Newey’s manager after shock reveal

Eddie Jordan has spoken more about how he became Adrian Newey’s manager, after he helped negotiate an early exit from the design great’s Red Bull contract.

There was surprise when, in the team’s press release announcing Newey’s departure, he thanked his “close friend and manager” Jordan – though for many, it was the first they had heard of Jordan having involvement in Newey’s professional dealings.

Eddie Jordan expands on long-standing Adrian Newey friendship

While he admitted they are two different people, Jordan said their shared love of music is what brought them closer and, through it, a friendship has built up over the course of decades.

Speaking on the Formula For Success podcast, Jordan was asked to explain how his position came about as Newey’s manager – and he went into detail about the rapport he has built up with the designer over the years, and how questions would be asked of him over time, which subsequently evolved.

“First of all, I think you’d have to give some credit to Ian Phillips. Ian was his team principal way back in the Leyton House days, and that was the late 80s, that’s how far I go back with Adrian,” Jordan explained.

“I was always a little bit apprehensive about [managing him] because Adrian is so super clever. I’m often thinking to myself, ‘Should I be in the same room as this guy?’

“Because he thinks differently than me, he looks different to me. The only thing that we have perhaps in common is a total and absolute love for music. Behind that person is a complete rockstar.

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“Glastonbury doesn’t happen without him, the Isle of Wight Festival, he’s locked into all sorts of things musically, so that’s cool, and any time we’re in Cape Town, we always wind up in the same places, and then of course, we cycle an awful lot together.

“And over the years, he’d say ‘Ah, Eddie, I’m not happy about this, or I love that, or I think about that, and what about this’, and then we’d go sailing, and then you’d say, you know, I really like this, this is a nice way of getting a bit of downtime from motor racing, it’s driving me mad.

“We have to remember that we know how many World Championships he’s won for drivers and teams, totalling now 25, and I daresay with the way Max is going at the moment, he’ll add to that this year because, I must remind everybody, he is still very much a part of the Red Bull team as we speak.

“And he is absolutely determined to make sure, when he does leave, it will be in a celebration – and so it should be, because of what he’s brought to every team that he’s worked with, from Leyton House, to Williams to McLaren, and then on to [Red Bull].

“However, the answer is that I say to him, ‘you know, Adrian, when you have a pencil in your hand, and you’re looking at a drawing board, there is absolutely no-one your equal, but you take the pencil out of your hand and you become just a normal d*ck like the rest of us.’

“He kind of chuckles at that, but I’m sure he probably thinks I’m being very cheeky, but I’m not being cheeky, I’m serious. He’s just a normal guy.

“But inside that brain must be something really smart going on, on a regular basis because he continually gets it right, particularly with the new rule changes coming up shortly.

“I must tell you that he is a genius when it comes to evaluating how to take advantage of those rules, how to get the best out of them, and how to make sure that the team in the car maximises in every avenue that he can possibly get.”

Read next: Christian Horner calls Eddie Jordan a ‘f***ing silent assassin’ after Adrian Newey exit