Eddie Jordan threatened to sack Damon Hill from his F1 team before he’d even started a race

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F1 world champion Damon Hill was told he’d breached his Jordan contract before he even made his debut for the team.

Hill, who had won the title in 1996 with Williams, moved to Jordan ahead of the 1998 season after a single year at Arrows.

The British driver had turned down an offer from Eddie Jordan’s squad, a forerunner of Aston Martin, a year earlier, but agreed to become Ralf Schumacher’s teammate after Benetton signed Giancarlo Fisichella.

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Damon Hill says arriving late to a team launch nearly cost him his seat

Speaking on the Stay on Track podcast earlier this year, Hill recalled arriving late to the team’s glitchy London launch in ’98. A PR commitment beforehand had run long.

He assumed there would be no repercussions, but a furious Eddie Jordan told him he had breached his contractual obligations by not being on time.

Hill says the ’embarrassing’ exchange was a sign of things to come at the Jordan team, who had a maverick reputation.

It was an era when teams were starting to invest more and more money into their launches, hence Jordan’s emotional response.

• READ MORE: David Coulthard reveals why Eddie Jordan made Christian Horner and Toto Wolff ‘nervous’ in the F1 paddock

“It started off at the London Palladium,” he said. “That was going a bit far. We’d gone to a theatre and there was a little of pizzazz.

“I’d turned up late, because I’d been doing PR work. I was doing my job as a racing driver and got a little bit late for his launch event, not that it mattered. Everyone was there anyway.

“But he took the opportunity of claiming that I’d breached the contract. I hadn’t even started driving for him yet! I was in breach of contract before I even had the launch.

“That was what it was like driving with Eddie. A little bit embarrassing, and set the tone for what it was going to be like for the two years I drove for him.”

How Damon Hill did at Jordan after he was almost sacked

Jordan was no doubt relieved that he didn’t take any drastic action during the off-season because Hill would later deliver the team’s first victory at the Belgian Grand Prix, leading a one-two.

That was Hill’s only podium of the year, but it was enough to finish in the top six of the world championship. Jordan posted their best-ever constructors’ showing with P4.

• READ MORE: Damon Hill realised he’d become a danger to his ‘fellow drivers’ after one crash in his final season

They gained another spot a year later, though Hill was outperformed by new signing Heinz-Harald Frentzen.

The Hampstead native opted to retire at the end of that 1999 season. While he didn’t achieve his objective of fighting for a second title at Jordan, he did enhance his legacy with a classic victory at Spa.