Eddie Irvine has been a shrewd operator for most of his adult life. He carefully maneuvered himself into the second seat at Ferrari and kept it for four years—no mean feat in itself—where he developed just the right blend of acquiescence and competitiveness to create a positive working relationship with the team’s huge star, Michael Schumacher, who had things very much his own way at Maranello. And, especially since leaving motor racing, Eddie has become a multi-millionaire property investor, an executive film producer, a TV star and was involved in a brawl in a nightclub in 2014 with the son of Milan’s mayor, Gabriele Moratti!
In fact, Eddie was a property investment millionaire before he ever became an F1 racer, and developed that into interests in around 40 properties. A few years ago, with investments across the world, he was said to be worth £160 million!
Born Edmund Irvine in Newtownards, Northern Ireland, on November 10, 1965, Eddie spent much of his childhood in the village of Conlig. He used to watch the British Grand Prix with his enthusiast parents and wanted to race motorcycles. His father, Edmund Senior, thought that was too dangerous, so the lad turned his attention to cars. He first raced in Formula Ford in 1983 and gradually honed his craft until he joined the Van Diemen team and won three series for them in 1987: the Esso Formula Ford 1600, the RAC Formula Ford 1600 and the Formula Ford Festival, scoring a total of 17 wins and 18 pole positions in 31 races. So the promise was definitely there.
Eddie was nothing like as successful in Formula Three, but did well in Japanese F3000 in 1992-’93 and even had a crack at the 1993 24 Hours of Le Mans, coming 4th in a SARD Toyota. That same year he had his first taste of Formula One with Eddie Jordan’s team, and enraged the eventual winner of the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, Ayrton Senna, by re-passing the Brazilian’s McLaren and holding him up after previously being lapped by the winning car. After the race, an incensed Senna stomped over to the Jordan garage and asked the Irishman what the @#$% was he up to. Eddie just shrugged, completely unruffled by the triple World Champion’s fury. So Ayrton punched the Irishman in the face and Eddie fell back onto a chair, after which the two men were separated and the whole thing died down.
Eddie nearly did it at the 1994 Le Mans, where he came 2nd and won his class in SARD-sponsored Toyota 94C-V with co-drivers Mauro Martini and Jeff Krosnoff.
Irvine was still with Jordan in 1995, his best result 3rd in the Canadian GP in the unsuccessful Peugeot-engined Jordan. But that year, Ferrari came a-hunting and he was invited to become Michael Schumacher’s number two at Maranello after Gerhard Berger had moved to Benetton. Irvine couldn’t believe his luck—a Ferrari works team F1 driver, for which any self-respecting racer would give his eye teeth.
In his first season with the Prancing Horse, he scored a 3rd place first time out in the Australian GP, after which his unreliable Ferrari 310 made sure he had to retire eight consecutive times. But he was a Ferrari driver, in the highest echelon of his profession, and that’s what counted. As it was, the 1997 310B proved a much better prospect, and while the weight of the team was always behind wunderkind Schumacher, Eddie still stepped up onto the podium five times, with his best performance a 2nd in the Grand Prix of Argentina after Michael had retired.
Things got even better in 1998 with the Ferrari F300 working well; he took 2nd places in the French and Italian GPs and five 3rds, but 1999 was to be a year of high drama. First, Irvine won the Grand Prix of Australia in the Ferrari F399, his first F1 victory, then took 2nd at Monaco, all before Michael Schumacher had a frightening accident at Silverstone in which he broke a leg. That left Eddie the number one driver for a time, with Sweden’s Mika Salo brought in to back him up. And, after the Irishman had won the Austrian GP to stay in the fight for the world title, that’s just what Salo did when he was winning the German Grand Prix in the F399. He backed off and let Eddie pass him and take the win. Things didn’t go too well for our aspirant champion after that, with Irvine taking a 3rd in Hungary but lower placings in the next three races.
The Formula 1 world was rife with speculation on whether or not Schumacher, whose injury was well on the mend, would come back at the end of the season from the Grand Prix of Malaysia and help Eddie win the title—not Michael’s cup of tea at all. But he did come back and Irvine did win in Malaysia, but could only make 3rd in Japan to lose the championship to Mika Hakkinen in a McLaren with 76 points to Irvine’s 74. Ferrari had to console itself with the Constructors Championship, to which both drivers had contributed.
After that, Eddie was courted by Jaguar Racing, the ex-Jackie Stewart Ford Formula One team, for which Johnny Herbert famously won the 1999 European GP at the Nürburgring. So Irvine joined Jaguar for the 2000 season and stayed there until the end of the 2002, which had to be the most frustrating period of his racing career. Powered by Cosworth V10s, the cars were uncompetitive throughout, and he collected 25 retirements over the course of three seasons. At the end of 2002, he was negotiating his return to Jordan, but that never came off and he retired from the sport.
After that career, Irvine started a new, multi-faceted one. It began with him suing TalkSport Radio for using his image in promotion without consulting him. Ironically, Eddie went on to work for the station for eight years, when later he presented a 30-minute program for them on Formula One. He got himself into trouble with the British police in 2003 for riding a scooter through Hyde Park at 30 mph with no license or insurance. He was supposed to appear at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court to answer the charge, but didn’t, so an arrest warrant with bail was issued.
He played himself in a comedy called The Prince and Me with Julia Stiles, was behind a new Sky TV program in which two female racing drivers competed against two men. The men, captained by Eddie, won.
And, as for that punch-up in Milan with Gabriele Moratti, he was sentenced to six months in prison, but the sentence is believed to have been suspended.
Also known for his pretty girlfriends, who apparently included Pamela Anderson, the Baywatch bathing suit legend, Eddie long enjoyed a relationship with Maria Drummond, with whom he had a daughter, Zoe.
