Jordan might come back

His name above the garage is set to disappear, but former F1 team owner Eddie Jordan has vowed to return to the sport if another privateer era dawns.

While the yellow Jordans race around a grand prix track in Shanghai for the last time ever, EJ – the Irishman – will be walking the 'Wall of China' elsewhere in the country.

''It's a very sad day,'' Jordan said, as the independent Jordan, Minardi, Sauber and BAR names race away from pitlane.

He told Reuters: ''(F1) needs private teams.

''I would love to come back.

''But you couldn't risk your own and other people's money,'' Eddie Jordan continued, ''in a situation which (now) is so loaded against you.''

Appropriately, the 'Jordan' name will exit F1 on Sunday with its 250th grand prix, albeit with its current drivers a lowly fifteenth and nineteenth on the Chinese grid.

It was not always thus.

Yellow Jordans have won four grands prix (in 1998, 1999 and 2003), nineteen podiums and two poles.

'Direct of Business Affairs' Ian Phillips has been there since the very beginning, back in 1991, when no fewer than 19 teams – mostly privateers – oversubscribed the grid.

''In our first seven years,'' he recalls, ''16 teams disappeared from F1. I hope Eddie and the team will be remembered for having put a bit of flavor in the business.''