Death, taxes and… Ford?
When it comes to constants in life, it’s almost a given after 122 years of Ford’s existence that the company will be involved in motorsport in a significant way.
After all, Ford launched, in 1903, in part thanks to racing: Henry Ford had won an event two years earlier in his “Sweepstakes” car, and the prize money (plus the publicity and investors that followed) helped launch his second auto company, one that remains beloved by many Americans today.
Now, in 2026, Ford is re-entering Formula One.
Ford may be the third-most-accomplished engine manufacturer in F1, with 176 grands prix wins, trailing only Ferrari and Mercedes on such stakes, but it hasn’t featured on the grid since 2004, when it powered the Jaguar Racing team.
Jaguar was bought by Red Bull at the end of that season. Now, Ford is returning to grand prix racing via a partnership with Red Bull, as they tackle F1’s new engine rules together.
But Will Ford, general manager for Ford Performance, feels his family’s company has a different message to bring to the pinnacle of motorsport.
“When you look across the teams on the grid, the other OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), they’re really luxury brands,” he tells The Athletic in an interview. “A lot of them obviously have great performance and motorsport histories, but Ford, it’s an iconic American brand — one of two now on the grid (along with Cadillac, which also debuts in 2026).
“But we’re the everyman’s brand.”
And America seems to agree.
Time Magazine recently released a comprehensive analysis of “America’s Most Iconic Companies”, in honor of the United States’ 250th birthday, with 10,000 people surveyed.
Number one wasn’t Nike, The Walt Disney Company or Apple. Target and Starbucks didn’t even crack the top 20.
It was the Ford Motor Company.
“We’re a team and a brand that the average American F1 fan around the world can identify,” Ford continues. “And I think Red Bull is a perfect partner for us to come back onto the grid with that message. Red Bull has the challenger mentality.”
Ford made its first F1 appearance in 1967, in the same role it is returning now – as an engine supplier.
Back then, it introduced a double four-valve engine, built in partnership with the Cosworth company. The DFV engine, as it became widely known, is considered one of the greatest racing engines and one of the most successful in F1 history, with teams running it chalking up 155 grands prix victories, 12 drivers’ titles and 10 constructors’ championships between 1967 and 1983.
Though the DFV’s might eventually waned, the company remained in F1 during the years that followed. The engine Michael Schumacher used to win his first world championship in 1994? A Ford.
From 1995, however, its engines’ successes began declining, and the last Ford-powered F1 win to date came in April 2003 — by Giancarlo Fisichella’s Jordan at the Brazilian Grand Prix.
But after a 22-year F1 hiatus, the company has been lured back.
Michael Schumacher driving for Benetton during the 1994 season, where he clinched the most recent F1 championship success using a Ford engine (Steve Etherington/EMPICS / Getty Images)
F1’s technical regulations have been overhauled for 2026. Cars are being made smaller and lighter. Engines will now rely on more electrical power, as well as use sustainable fuels. As this change to the rules comes at a time when electric vehicles and performance hybrids are becoming more popular with the public, Ford sees an opportunity for transferring new technology developed in racing to its road-car products.
“We’re committed to high-performance V8s, and making those for as long as we can legally make them. But hybrid technology has gotten so advanced and so good that we can offer performance hybrid powertrains and customer vehicles going forward without sacrificing any of the performance,” Will Ford says.
“And so, getting into the ultimate laboratory, the ultimate torture test for high-performance hybrids, there’s no better way for us to advance our capabilities and proving it than out in the F1 competitive landscape. Ultimately, everything we do and learn through this Red Bull partnership is going to work its way into our production vehicles for our customers.”
Ford’s executive chairman Bill Ford – the great-grandson of company founder Henry and father to Will – says that technology transfer is significant when it comes to both engines and aerodynamics.
“Every time we race, and everywhere we race, there’s something we can take back to our production vehicles,” he explains. “A great example of that is all the off-road racing we’re doing now, what we learn off-road. Not just about the engine, but the entire vehicle. And that ultimately makes its way back to the customer. We haven’t done that yet in F1, but that’s the expectation.”
Transferability across racing categories, though, is more limited. Ford’s racing portfolio is vast, ranging from drifting and rallying championships to stock car racing in the United States’ NASCAR Cup Series. And each category and set of regulations is unique. As Bill Ford puts it: “Sometimes they translate across the rest of the racing portfolio, and sometimes they don’t.”
F1 has a global reach unlike any other motorsport series. Making the return to it is a step that the Ford family is “extremely proud of,” Will Ford says.
As Ford is committed to “consistently finding the biggest stages and the hardest challenges in the motorsport world,” he says, an eventual move back into F1 was “the next logical step”.
The Red Bull/Ford alliance has already come under scrutiny, with the highly successful F1 team building the engines that it – and its Racing Bulls sister team – will use from the start of the 2026 season in early March.
General Motors’ brand Cadillac is arriving in F1 at the same time as Ford’s return, and the rivalry between the two American companies that has existed for so long in the automotive sales world is already heating up ahead of their shared on-track action.
Dan Towriss, CEO of the Cadillac F1 team, called the Ford-Red Bull partnership “a marketing deal with very minimal impact” in a recent interview with The Athletic. The Fords bat that suggestion away.
Bill Ford says: “I would say, actually, the reverse is true. They’re running a Ferrari engine. They’re not running a Cadillac engine. I don’t know if they have any GM employees on the race team.”
General Motors has been approved by the FIA, world motorsport’s governing body, to be an F1 engine supplier from the 2029 season.
Ford’s involvement with the Red Bull-led engine project runs deeper than simply putting logos on the cars and team apparel.
Its engineers are working at Red Bull’s engine-building campus in Milton Keynes, England, and other Ford staff are providing additional support from the States. They have already worked on developing specific tools and software, while Ford said its 3D printing capabilities have helped reduce parts production time for the new engine during its development phase.
“We found the areas where Ford can uniquely complement the skills and capabilities that Red Bull has, given the size and breadth and technical expertise within our organization, with the intention of creating the best power unit in F1,” says Will Ford. “Just like we did in decades past.”
When asked if this new engine project is the trickiest challenge yet for the company to tackle from a racing perspective – given the complexity of achieving success in such a highly technical motorsport sphere – neither Ford executive would be drawn.
Will says, “F1 is a complicated world, but racing at the Dakar Rally and having Ford Raptor T1+s cross the finish line in first place after 12 long stages like that comes with a whole different set of challenges and complications. That’s the beauty of racing, though.”
Bill Ford speaking in Detroit, Michigan, in September 2025 (Bill Pugliano / Getty Images)
It’s a beauty that the Ford organization will be embracing in a slightly new way this time around.
As the company hosts its season launch at Michigan Central Station in downtown Detroit this evening (Thursday), where the liveries that will be used on the 2026 Red Bull and Racing Bull F1 cars will also be revealed, Bill Ford says the event will “show that we’re now looking at racing differently”.
It’s more than just racing to win — something Ford has always striven to do. “Now, more importantly, we will be connecting retail buyers with racing, and we’ll have products that will be developed from the racing world for the retail buyer,” he explains.
How F1’s next chapter will fit into this equation remains to be seen, as the grid prepares for preseason testing and then the season-opening grand prix in Melbourne, Australia, on March 8. The venture with Red Bull has been three years in the making — it was first announced in February 2023 – and while racing is important to Ford’s DNA, this latest move in F1 is personal for the family.
“Our family name is on everything we do. Therefore, everything we do must be great. And that’s why we are tackling F1,” Bill Ford says, “and we’re very confident, as we tackle F1, that we will be great.
“So, from a family standpoint, everything is personal for us. Our name is on every car and truck we sell. It’s in every race that we participate in.
“It doesn’t get much more personal than that.”
