F1 supremo Bernard Charles Ecclestone owns various bits of Formula One and has done since the 1970s, all of which has made him a very rich man. He also co-owns QPR Football Club, which does at least demonstrate that not all his decisions are spot-on.

In his time, Ecclestone has managed drivers, owned teams, sold TV rights he probably didn't have in the first place and married someone 28 years younger and 28cm taller than him. He has also developed a slightly bewildering antipathy towards Silverstone.

Jordan was the original incarnation of F1's hot potato, founded by brass-necked chancer Eddie Jordan. The team was famous for draping bikini-clad lovelies over its cars and also for discovering new talent but will never be excused in certain circles for giving Michael Schumacher his first drive in Formula One.

The team stepped up from F3000 in 1991, with Andrea de Cesaris and Bertrand Gachot behind the wheel, and ended the season in an impressive fifth place in the constructors' championship.

The year was not without incident, however.

Gachot found himself unable to complete the season after being imprisoned for attacking a London taxi driver and his replacement, the debutant Michael Schumacher, was nicked by Benetton after just one race. Jordan claimed a breach of contract but the case was thrown out of court and the next time a Schumacher would sit in a Jordan was in 1997, when Michael's petulant brother Ralf somehow talked his way into a drive.

Events in the Jordan pit were often more entertaining than those on the track and Eddie Irvine wasted no time in contributing to this, when he made his debut at Suzuka in 1993. Years of racing in Japan had given Eddie intimate knowledge of the track (and of some of the less choosy local lovelies too) but that didn't wash with Ayrton Senna when Irvine passed the Brazilian's McLaren to unlap himself in the closing stages. Senna later paid a visit to the Jordan garage and punched Irvine in the face, which may have been a slight over-reaction but is something that a lot of blokes and no doubt many, many women have wanted to do to the cocky little gobshite over the years.

For a whole decade Jordan's title sponsor was tobacco-pushing giant Benson & Hedges and, after painting the 1996 car a fetching gold to make it look like a B&H packet, the team showed not inconsiderable creative flair in getting round the cigarette advertising ban. Who can forget the "Bitten & Hisses" snake, the "Buzzing Hornets", um, hornet, the "Bitten Heroes" shark or the simple entreaty to "Be On Edge"?

An extraordinary Belgian Grand Prix in 1998 saw the team record its first victory and they did it in style, with a euphoric Damon Hill leading his sulking team-mate Ralf Schumacher in a one-two that seemed to be almost universally celebrated. The streets were strangely quiet in Kerpen that night.

The 1999 season built on this, with Heinz-Harald Frentzen somehow recording results, including two wins, that gave him an outside chance at the world title, before McLaren and Ferrari stopped mucking about. Frentzen still finished third overall and Jordan also claimed third in the constructors' championship but it was all downhill from here, until Midland bought the team early in 2005.

The history of Renault in F1 reads like a company with an addiction it's trying to kick.

They entered the sport as a constructor in 1977, winning a respectable number of races but no championships, then spent one season (1986) as an engine supplier, before pulling out completely at the end of the year.

After going cold turkey for a couple of years, they rejoined the sport as an engine supplier in 1989, winnning five drivers' and six constructors' titles, before quitting again in 1997. By 2000 the itch had to be scratched again, so they bought the Benetton team, although they didn't rebrand it as Renault until the 2002 season.

They have introduced a number of innovations to the sport, including turbo-charged engines (since banned), V10 engines (since banned) and mass-damper systems (since banned). The one thing they seem to have pioneered that hasn't been outlawed is something that actually makes the cars slower: live-feed in-car cameras.

The team persists in building their chassis in Oxfordshire and their engines several hundred miles away, somewhere in france. There is undoubtedly a very good reason for this, although your chronicler admits that any sort of logical explanation eludes him at the moment.

A phenomenally successful F1 team which won nine constructors' titles in 20 years (it took Ferrari 50 years to do the same) but which usually dispenses with the services of the drivers who win the title for them: Alan Jones, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost and Damon Hill all took championships and then left the team at the end of the year, for one reason or another.

The team hit a purple patch in the 1990s, when a combination of Adrian Newey's ground-breaking designs, some jolly clever electronics and a handful of half-decent drivers resulted in repeated title wins. The 1992 and 1993 Williams are probably the most technologically advanced Formula One cars to date and you could almost say that they drove themselves, without wishing to devalue the titles that Mansell and Prost won with them, of course.

This period also produced the iconic blue and white Rothmans livery, which looked great but which was probably responsible for shifting truckloads of their cigarettes. The team did attempt to make amends later, however, by running cars plastered with stickers for Niquitin and thereby promoting something to help you give up what they'd been urging you to become addicted to a few years previously.

For the 2004 season, the Williams challenger sported a highly unusual "walrus nose", which did nothing for the car's performance but which did at least mean that Ralf Schumacher was no longer the ugliest thing in the paddock. The innovative nose proved uncompetitive and was replaced by something more conventional in the second half of the year. Ralf also proved uncompetitive and was replaced by someone more talented at the end of the year.