Ford’s new focus: How the automaker tied up with Red Bull for its return to the grid

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In a way, it was Jim Farley’s choice of hat that did it.

Ford’s CEO was convinced Christian Horner, the boss of the Red Bull racing team, to descend on Detroit on the way to the Brazilian Grand Prix. His ambition was to create a partnership that would allow the US automaker to return to top-level racing.

Yet there was a lot of demand for the world champions, who had been looking for a new partner since 2026. Talks with Volkswagen’s Porsche had already lasted for months.

“When Jim entered, in a [Red Bull driver] Sergio Pérez at the first meeting, it seemed to me that it would start well,” recalls Horner. After that, “it all happened really fast,” he told the FT’s Future of the Car summit earlier this month. “Sometimes, you can tell right off the bat if the feeling is right.”

Since the deal was announced in February, work has begun rapidly. On the Red Bull campus just outside Milton Keynes, decorators have already replaced the gold and red emblems of the charging bull outside the engine building with a new blue nickname: Red Bull Ford Powertrains.

From 2026, Ford and Red Bull will collaborate on powertrains for F1 cars for both Red Bull teams, including Scuderia AlphaTauri.

Ford will take over the battery cell technology, and in exchange, get Red Bull chief technical officer Adrian Newey to help with aerodynamics on its future vehicles, something that could save the automaker thousands of dollars on each model. . “The battery is so expensive that aerodynamics is a primary capability in this new world of electric vehicles,” notes Farley.

Ford was once among the most successful racing teams in the sport, with 10 constructors’ championships and 13 drivers’ titles to its credit when it stepped down in 2004.

And he already has major racing programs with other models, from Mustang track racing to the “King of the Hammers” off-road series in the USA and his own World Rally Championship team with Puma.

But the marque, under Farley’s leadership, has seen something of a comeback at the helm of Formula over the past two-and-a-half years.

“With a focus on all-electric vehicles, we wanted to make sure our racing aligned with that,” says Mark Rushbrook, head of Ford’s motorsport unit. Yet options for all-electric racing, such as Formula E, were “too limited” in terms of what Ford could learn about batteries and powertrains, he explains.

There are more opportunities for technology transfer than in any electric racing series

However, new 2026 F1 rules will require half of the car’s power to come from a battery within a hybrid system. “Making a bespoke combustion engine to Formula 1 regulations with fully sustainable fuel” is something Red Bull can manage, says Horner, “but cell technology that will account for 50 per cent of the power of these cars in the future, it is something we know very little about.”

These, along with other changesopening the door for Ford, and others, to make real-world technological advances on the track, similar to the development of disc brakes for racing in the 1950s that eventually made their way into road-going cars.

“There are as many or more opportunities for innovation and technology transfer in F1 than any electric racing series,” says Rushbrook. “There is real technology and innovation as we are learning about electric on road vehicles, to test it [on racing cars]try it and bring this improved knowledge to our road cars.”

Unlike other automakers, such as AudiFord was not turned away to the sport by the growing US audience for the Netflix TV series, Drive to survive. “We’re not coming in for brand awareness, we’re coming in to tell people about the electrical products we can make,” Rushbrook points out.

The 2026 rule changes have also seen a flurry of other manufacturers return. And Ford’s archrival General Motors is looking to get back on the grid. An agreement between the Cadillac brand of GM and Andretti Autosport it was announced in January, with the aim in part to help the latter with his so far failed bid to join F1 as an eleventh team. Rushbrook insists Ford’s moves were “way ahead” of his longtime nemesis.

Ford had considered owning a team outright, as he had in the past, but the costs of doing so meant the partnership was much more attractive. Collaboration on projects is not yet clear-cut, more like a sausage machine approach than a traditional division of labor.

While the “upscale” form of the deal is billed, the teams come up with “new projects every day,” says Rushbrook. “We also found a few more yesterday.”

So while racing fans eagerly await Ford’s return to the track, the partners can explore the potential for collaborations that apply to the public road.

Red Bull’s Newey has long harbored ambitions of making a hypercar for the road, something Ford dabbled in with the GT40, back in the 1960s.

The Aston Martin Valkyrie was designed by Newey as part of a Red Bull partnership with the UK sports car maker. But, in 2020, Red Bull left the partnership, and although Newey has since designed a Red Bull track car, the RB17, there is widespread speculation that he wishes to revisit a road car.

Horner diplomatically calls the Aston Martin incident “a learning experience.”

“It was an interesting insight and one from which the advanced technology side of our business has learned a lot and I think it will be of great help to us for the future,” he says.

Rushbrook indicates that plans beyond racing can turn into full projects. “It’s still the early days of the relationship,” she says. “Every time we talk, we identify new projects to work on, even opportunities beyond that.”