The world according to Eddie Irvine

According to The Sunday Times, Eddie Irvine is now worth an astonishing £80million - not bad for a chap who financed his Formula Ford racing days by selling potatoes and second-hand Ford Fiestas. Eddie himself dismisses that estimate as pure fiction, and the paper's suggestion that he's lost a third of his fortune during the current recession would imply that they don't know him very well. But if anyone could ride that wave of misfortune and still come out ahead, it's Eddie Irvine.

Since leaving Formula 1 at the end of 2002, he's been very adept at making his money work for him. As well as property interests in the USA and elsewhere, he's involved in shipping, software and newsprint. And while there are no plans to don a suit and take on an office job, he's rarely off his mobile phone.

He's added a new line to his CV this year, too - that of F1 pundit for talkSPORT Radio, and can now share his colourful views with the nation.

Irvine also works hard at enjoying himself. He travels between his various bases - a low boredom threshold means he rarely stays still for long - and, inevitably, he's surrounded by beautiful girls.

To borrow the question famously asked of his countryman and sometime hero George Best: Eddie, where did it all go wrong?

Q. A lot of drivers retire and then spend their career earnings. You've actually added to your bank balance since you retired...

Eddie Irvine: I don't spend a lot of money, I never have done. Although I've had boats and aeroplanes, I don't really spend a lot of money on myself. I don't buy champagne in nightclubs, I don't drive around in big flashy cars. What I do, I get big bang for the buck. I'm very careful. I've had deals where I've lost money, but they are very few and far between, because I'm very cautious.

Q.You're now appearing on radio as an F1 pundit. Does that mean you're having to pay a bit more attention to what's happening in the sport than you have done in recent years?

EI: I have to - I can't go on the radio and talk about something I know nothing about. It's good that they came to me. They pushed hard for me to come to the studio and do it in London, but I said I'm just not interested in giving up my lifestyle. I need to be free.

Q. So with about half the races of the season down, what's your feeling about what's been happening in F1 so far this year?

EI: What amazes me is how at the level F1 is at, Adrian Newey still outperforms everybody else. I don't know how you get to the last one per cent of performance, and then he still manages to get that little bit more than everybody else.

Q. Do you see the irony in the fact that Jaguar nearly hired him and, in effect, he ended up working for the same team?

EI: If you look at what happened when Jaguar tried to get him, they probably didn't offer him a big enough amount of money compared to what Red Bull were offering. There was total lack of commitment in that team by management-level people. The people below that worked their arses off and did a bloody good job, but at management level everyone was just trying to get as much money as they could and clear off, and do as little work as possible. I'm one of the few people who actually fulfilled his contract and got paid the amount of money I was meant to get for the job I did. The others got paid to leave!

Q. How do you think the 2010 rule changes have affected Formula 1?

EI: I think it shows up the talent on the brakes at the beginning of the race, because the braking distances are quite big and it's a case of who can make a difference. But it's not as exciting. In Monaco, I really noticed how slow the cars were for the whole race. By the time the fuel has gone down, the tyres are shit. From that point of view, a bit of the spectacle has been lost. But I don't think it's really affected things too much. Before, it was people sitting waiting for a pitstop to overtake someone - what's the point of that?

I just think F1 has, to a certain extent, got so professional that it's strangling itself. You don't have as many blow-ups as you used to in the '80s. Back in the day, no one won the race until the chequered flag. Look at Lewis in Barcelona. The guy was driving his socks off and, with one lap to go, the wheel fell off. That's stuff that you can't make up but, at the same time, it's sad it doesn't happen more often. Until there's a tyre war, it's going to be marginally on the boring side, because you need tyres that are too soft to do a race or half a race. Then you have interesting things happen, like when the Prost was going fast after Bridgestone came in.

Q. What's your feeling about Hamilton, Vettel, Kubica, and the new generation that you'll never get the chance to race against?

EI: Those three are really impressive drivers. Vettel has been outperformed by Webber for a few races for some strange reason. I never rated Webber that highly, but you have to say he's done a bloody good job. It's early days yet - everyone is still in the hunt. Hamilton has driven some amazing races, but the whole act hasn't been there until recently - there just seemed to be a little bit of an issue that wasn't letting him perform at the level he should've been.

But McLaren have an amazing driver line-up. You've got Jenson, who doesn't make mistakes generally speaking, and you've got Lewis, who's got the ultimate speed - he's the ultimate racer - but can get too involved sometimes. McLaren have got a balanced little line-up there, although over the course of the season you would assume that Lewis would beat Jenson reasonably easily.

Q. Were you surprised when it was confirmed that Michael Schumacher was coming back?

Eddie Irvine in Monaco, 2010 © LAT

EI: Not really. What else is he going to do? You've got to remember that when he decided to come back, Button had just won the championship, and no one particularly rated Button that highly. Ross Brawn was running the team, Mercedes were coming back, so every box was ticked. Except the new car was shite!

Last year was really a lucky year for Ross. They came out with a car that kind of cheated the regulations in a way and by the time everybody else caught up, the championship was already won. It was a very fortunate year. Michael took his gamble, and it's backfired a little bit. But he's making money, he's back getting noticed, and people are talking about him again.

When he was turning up at circuits after he'd retired, he was like a spare prick at a wedding - there was absolutely no reason for him to be there. Someone told me Michael came to a race six months after he quit, and a journalist pushed him out of the way to get to Lewis! The king is dead, long live the king. That's F1. He probably missed the attention, and missed the racing. At the end of the day, he was doing motorcycle racing for that competitive thing, and he was useless, it was dangerous, and he didn't get paid. That didn't make sense at all.

Q. It was a tough situation for Nico Rosberg to deal with at Mercedes. How highly do you rate him?

EI: I rate him very highly. I think he's a very clever kid, he's quick, he doesn't make a lot of mistakes, and he's very hard on himself. I think he's a real huge star.

Q. While we're on comebacks, what about Jacques Villeneuve's attempt with Stefan GP?

EI: It was a bit desperate, in fact very desperate. But that's Jacques; that's all he's got. He's got no other strings to his bow, has he? So he's got to go and race something. F1 is the ultimate, so let him try. It didn't work out for him.

Q. You and Jacques were very outspoken, but no one is anymore. Is that a sign of the times?

EI: I don't care. They all take it so personally.

Q. Can you relate to how current drivers feel? You once said that the thought of getting back in an F1 car made you physically sick...

EI: I'd love to spend a day testing around Monaco, I think. I think. I might get in it and put the throttle down and think, 'What am I doing?' The rest of the circuits I don't give a damn about. Monaco satisfied my attention deficit disorder!

Q. Do drivers spend too much time studying data?

EI: Yes - and getting confused! I know Michael used to spend hours and hours studying data and, to be honest, it was a complete waste of time. I think there was a lot less that we could do about the problems than some people thought.

Q. You were criticised a lot at the time for being a playboy, and not taking it seriously...

EI: Listen, the only one of my team-mates to ever really beat me in Formula 1 was Michael Schumacher. Every other one, I outqualified them mostly. If you look at my time at Jaguar, none of my team-mates there beat me. I don't think I actually got beaten in a race by a team-mate the whole time I was at Jaguar.

Q. Your theory always was that if you were happy you'd be driving well, so relaxing was important...

EI: I know myself reasonably well. I know what I'm good at and I know what I'm bad at. Michael maybe needed to sit there and get confused, you know? He'd think we were solving problems. I kind of realised I'm not solving anything here, we're just going round and round in circles.

Q. You came second in 1999. Have you realised that under the current points system, you'd have been world champion by a considerable margin?

EI: With the last points system and this points system I would have been world champion. It's all a load of bollocks. At the end of the day you go round and round and round, everyone scores points, you add them up at the end and that's the world champion. Big deal.

Q. There's no sense of frustration though? That year you had a few sixth and seventh places, which are worth a lot now...

EI: No. But I would rather the system was back the way it was. People talk about getting points. A point used to be something special, but it's not now. They've taken away another thing about F1 that was special. Like all the tracks now - Monaco is special, Spa is special, Silverstone is kind of special, although not compared to Brands Hatch. And then we've got all these flashy, perfect circuits that bore the shit out of everybody. Except for Singapore, which was bumpy and crazy in the first year, and they've even tried to anaesthetise that.

Q. Would life be different if you'd won in 1999?

EI: Maybe. I don't know. I was still going to Jaguar, so that was me screwed! Instead of getting introduced to girls as Eddie Irvine, Ferrari driver, I'd be getting introduced as Eddie Irvine, 1999 world champion. It doesn't make much difference. It would be nice to have it, and for my family to have it, and for Northern Ireland to have it. I'd like to have won it, but I don't think it's affecting my life too much.

Q. You seem to have more money that a lot of people who have won the title...

EI: I would say Lewis is still counting! When you're young you think, 'I want to be world champion,' and then you see some people who have won it, and then you see inside the sport and you realise you've got to be a good driver, but it's really much more about the car. I never had a car that was capable. I mean, in 1999, the only reason the car was capable was because it wouldn't break down Apart from that, it was a slug.

Q. Do you ever look back at that final race in Suzuka and think about what went wrong?

EI: From the minute I went on the track I had no grip. I got on the radio to Luca [Baldisserri, his race engineer] and said, 'Jesus, this is like driving on pieces of wood.' I just kept repeating that the whole weekend - no grip. I honestly have no idea why. All I know is that we had the same downforce on both cars, because my guys checked Michael's. If you look at any year at Suzuka, on my first flying lap I was always right at the front. That year I was nowhere, and I was nowhere the whole weekend. I went back the following year with Jaguar and qualified closer to Michael than I had in the same car.

Q. That was your last race with Ferrari. How do you look back on that part of your life?

EI: It was an amazing experience. I was there for four years, and I loved every minute of it. It set me up for life. Jean Todt was amazing to work with, he's very clever. Ross [Brawn] was great, and it was great to work with Michael and see how he did things as well. I was very fortunate to go there.

Q. Michael didn't win the title while you were there, but nevertheless you were part of the process of building the team up.

EI: It was a huge effort - it was Italy's version of trying to put a man on the moon. It was a very special period, and being a Ferrari driver is special anyway. And to fight for the world championship in a Ferrari was very special.

Q. Do you think you got enough credit? By the time Rubens Barrichello came along, it was much easier to win races in the second Ferrari.

EI: No, I think I got a lot of credit within the team for what I did. Who cares about the rest?

Q. Did you have something of a love/hate relationship with Jean Todt?

EI: No, I didn't have a love/hate relationship with him, and everyone seems to think I had the same with Michael and Ross as well. I didn't have an issue with any of them. They were all doing the best they could for Ferrari, which was their job.

Q. What do you think of Jean as the FIA boss?

EI: I think he's made a lot of good decisions. He's a clever, clever guy. The only criticism I ever felt really was when Todt Jr was Felipe Massa's manager, and he brought Massa into Ferrari. That was the only time I thought, 'Hmm, I don't think you should be doing that.' But since then Massa has justified his position.

Q. Would you be a steward if the FIA asked you?

EI: Only if I could call the shots, 100 per cent. I'm not going to sit down and have a discussion with a load of people I don't know about whether someone should be done. I totally disagree with what happened to Lewis in Spa in 2008. I can't be bothered having arguments about stuff that doesn't make any difference to me.

Q. Any regrets at all about your racing career?

EI: I can't complain. I got from my dad's scrapyard in Ireland to fighting for the F1 world championship for Ferrari. I saw how a team should be run, then went to a team where I saw how it shouldn't be run. Jean Todt made it seem much easier than it was, and Jaguar made it seem much harder than it was. That was an amazing piece of insight that I got, and it's stood me in good stead.

Q. How do you see your future?

EI: More of the same. I just bought myself a nice island in the Bahamas. I'm going to build a little resort for myself, and go between there, Miami, New York, Ibiza, Ireland, Milan and the boat... and try and make a few quid along the way.