The halcyon days of the late '90s, when Ireland came close to ruling Formula 1, seem like a distant memory today. Jordan, Eddie Irvine, Peter Collins presenting RTÉ's coverage - these are all things that the younger generation of Irish sports fan won't have any memory of.
To the generation affectionately known as 'Z', the mere idea of Ireland being involved at the top level of motorsport may seem completely out of the question, but it has happened before.
The sensational Formula 1 news on Friday was that the iconic Andretti family are exploring the possibility of entering a new team into the sport from 2024 onwards. 1978 world champion Mario Andretti tweeted the news in a bombshell announcement on Friday night.
Michael has applied to the FIA to field a new F1 team starting in 2024. His entry, Andretti Global, has the resources and checks every box. He is awaiting the FIA's determination.
— Mario Andretti (@MarioAndretti) February 18, 2022
The prospect of the first new team in Formula 1 since 2016 is a hugely exciting one, but it now has us thinking. 30 years on from Jordan's F1 debut, what's to say we won't ever see an Irish Formula 1 team again?
Will we ever see another Irish Formula 1 team?
Well, actually, there's a lot to say we won't ever see an Irish Formula 1 team again.
For starters, F1 is an incredibly hard sport to justify entering. It is perhaps the most expensive sport on the planet, and it's nowhere near as easy as merely saying "let's enter." The lowest-placed team in the 2020 standings, Williams, still had to pay a $570,000 entry fee, on top of the $145million budgeted to run the team over the course of the season.
The emotion when Williams managed to score points for the first time in two years at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix speaks volumes as to just how tough life is for the teams at the back of the grid.
There aren't many people in Ireland with a spare $150million lying around - and there certainly aren't many who have a keen interest in motorsport.
On top of that, you'd have to find an engine supplier willing to do business with you. Mercedes already supply engines for just under half of the grid, Ferrari and Honda both have their own factory setups, and Renault have stripped back their engine output in the past few years.
So, from the beginning it looks unlikely. Why would you even want to enter an Irish Formula 1 team in the first place? Would there be any chance of success?
Anyone born pre-1995 will remember a time when the Irish had great success in Formula 1 - not just the Jordan team, but also in Northern Irish driver Eddie Irvine. The Irish F1 craze reached its nirvana in 1999, when Irvine finished an agonising second in the drivers' championship, with Jordan and impressive third in the teams' championship.
EDDIE IRVINE
145 GP starts
26 podiums
4 wins (Australia, Austria, Germany, Malaysia - all 1999)#F1FastFact #F1 pic.twitter.com/BDrMbSSCIK— Formula 1 (@F1) October 17, 2015
That was a different time, however. When adjusted for inflation, Jordan's budget for the 1999 season would be around $86million in today's money. That's barely over half of the current budget cap, meaning there would be a significant step up needed to even be contending for points.
If recent examples are anything to go by, you would want to be vying for points from the get go.
Four new teams have entered F1 since 2010, and only one remains. Lotus, Virgin Racing, and Hispania Racing Team all joined in 2010, with Virgin eventually becoming Manor and lasting until 2016 before permanently folding. The other two were both gone by 2014.
Haas are the most recent addition to Formula 1, and they've done things differently to most teams of the past - but that's not to say that their play has worked. Having outsourced much of their car production to Ferrari, and tried to balance two team bases in the United States and the UK, they have fallen slowly into a desperate financial situation.
The Haas story is perhaps the one that will most dissuade potential new team owners from joining F1. They had a frankly sensational arrival into Formula 1, with Romain Grosjean taking P6 and P5 in the team's first two races - a virtually unheard of feat. Even with that level of performance, and a fifth place finish in the constructors' championship in 2018, they've still ended up in financial ruin.
It was a day to remember for the @HaasF1Team
50th race ✅
Best finish (P4) ✅
Biggest points haul (22) ✅#AustrianGP 🇦🇹 #F1 pic.twitter.com/9qFjTvO8hi— Formula 1 (@F1) July 1, 2018
So, let's say hypothetically that the cost, the years-long effort just to make it to your first race, the logistical issues, and the likely lack of competitiveness don't dishearten you, and you're dead set on becoming only the second Irish person to set up a Formula 1 team in the modern age.
The question then becomes: how do you make this team a success?
Perhaps Eddie Jordan's proudest achievement as team boss of Jordan was not the 3rd place in the 1999 world championship, but rather the astonishing list of names who got their first break with the Irish team.
It should be a point of pride for Irish sporting fans that Michael Schumacher, Rubens Barrichello, Ralf Schumacher, and Eddie Irvine all made their Formula 1 debuts for Jordan F1 team. Ayrton Senna and Mark Webber were both given opportunities for Jordan while their junior careers were at standstills. Webber's recent post to Instagram about "EJ" would suggest he owes a lot of his successful F1 career to the Dubliner.
Formula 1 teams have moved towards a "young driver" system in recent years. Red Bull have been doing it for nearly twenty years now, running two separate teams so that their academy drivers have a shot at F1 in their "junior" team (AlphaTauri) before being promoted to the Red Bull team in the hope of winning world championships.
Mercedes have somewhat followed suit, placing their junior drivers in teams with smaller budgets to whom they supply engines - with Williams' George Russell the prime example of that. Similarly, Ferrari have historically placed their young drivers at Alfa Romeo, with their current lead driver Charles Leclerc coming from Alfa Romeo at the end of 2018.
Renault are, as of 2022, the only factory team with no junior team. Given the success with which Eddie Jordan trusted in youth throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, perhaps the only conceivable way in for an Irish team would be as a "junior" team for someone like Renault.
That would not only solve the issue of sourcing engines, but would also guarantee a future top-level driver in an Irish seat. This is all speaking hypothetically, of course, but the likes of Guanyou Zhou in the Renault academy are tipped for big things, and any new team could do far worse than rely in youth - after all, it worked out well for Eddie Jordan.
At the end of the day, the question of whether there will ever be an Irish Formula 1 team again sadly has a short answer: probably not. It's unlikely we'll see any new teams in the coming years, let alone any Irish ones, unless the rules change in a way that makes it appealing for prospective team owners.
But, as a member of a generation that just missed the golden era of Jordan's time at the top, I'll allow myself to dream that, maybe, one day we might see an Irish team in Formula 1 again - and they might even be good enough to get Amhrán na bhFiann played on the podium afterwards.
We live in hope.
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