Exclusive: How Red Bull and Ford managed to build a competitive F1 engine straight away

During an entertaining media session with the Dutch press in Zandvoort last year — yes, the same one in which he also spoke about certain AI videos — Toto Wolff discussed Red Bull’s own engine project. “They’ve got Mount Everest to climb,” the Mercedes team boss said at the time. It sounded like a realistic assessment, and one that Laurent Mekies fully agreed with.

After the first on-track action of 2026, however, very different noises emerged from the paddock. During winter testing in Bahrain, both Wolff and George Russell suddenly called the Red Bull Ford power unit “the absolute benchmark”.

Those comments were tied to the compression ratio discussion and clearly politically motivated — and not for nothing did Max Verstappen reply: “Just wait and see how fast Mercedes will be on all the straights in Melbourne” — but there is still an element of truth to them.

While the start of the season has been difficult for Red Bull on the chassis side, the power unit has proven surprisingly competitive for a newcomer.

Why Ford is now more interested in the combustion engine

The story dates back, as is well known, to 2021, when Honda formally decided to pull the plug on its F1 project. The Japanese manufacturer later reversed that decision, as it has done more than once before, though by the time that happened Red Bull had already decided it no longer wanted to depend on an engine supplier and instead take matters into its own hands.

Red Bull completed the construction of its power unit facility in just 55 weeks on its Milton Keynes campus, opposite the MK7 building, in what later became known as the Jochen Rindt building.

Anyone entering the facility these days — albeit under strict conditions and with camera lenses taped over — first arrives at Brodie’s Boulevard, named after Steve Brodie, one of the first employees to come over from Mercedes High Performance Powertrains in August 2021. In that hallway, Red Bull's very first V6 combustion engine is also displayed, which was fired up for the first time in August 2022, just in time for Dietrich Mateschitz to witness it.

Red Bull Ford Powertrains

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

A long journey has unfolded since then. Negotiations with Porsche collapsed, Ford stepped in as the new partner — with Mark Rushbrook simply sending Christian Horner an email — and a diverse workforce has been assembled under the leadership of Ben Hodgkinson, including even more recruits from Mercedes HPP.

The eventual debut of the DM01 — again a tribute to Mateschitz — marks a new chapter in Red Bull’s F1 history, but also a special moment for its new partner, as Ford Performance director Rushbrook told Autosport during an exclusive interview.

“It’s been a long journey, three and a half years to get the power unit on track, so it was fantastic to see that in Melbourne for the start of the season. And it’s great for Ford to be properly back in the sport.”

“We knew what an incredible challenge it would be, simply to get on the grid with the new power unit, to be honest. But to be in the mix like we are, it certainly feels good.”

While Honda explained in the build-up to 2026 that it mainly focused on the electrical components during the first development phase, Red Bull initially concentrated slightly more on the combustion engine, to extract the most from tests on a single-cylinder setup and, after positive results from that, on a full V6.

Given the different backgrounds of both projects, those approaches in the early stages made sense, although the current situation above all shows the benefit of having everything on-site. Honda was only able to solve its vibration issues once Aston Martin left one of its AMR26 cars in Sakura following the Japanese Grand Prix, which underlines the challenge of running such a programme across both the UK and Japan.

In Red Bull's case, it should also be noted that Ford gradually became more involved in the project than originally agreed and anticipated.

Mark Rushbrook, Head of Motorsport Ford Performance

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

“Yes, the original list was focused on the electrification part of it: the battery cell, the motor, the inverter, the software, and the calibration board,” Rushbrook explained.

“But what we didn’t expect, and what wasn’t a priority for us initially, was the combustion engine. That changed during the programme, especially as our road car cycle plan has changed.”

The latter refers to Ford scaling back its original plan to phase out combustion-only road cars.

“The biggest area that we didn’t expect is how far it’s pushed us on some things like additive manufacturing or advanced manufacturing,” Rushbrook continued.

“The ability to print parts, to make them so quickly with the turnaround, and with the quality control and the precision that’s needed, the dimensional control that’s needed, that has pushed us much further than we ever anticipated. And that’s been a huge benefit for other racing programmes as well.”

How competitive is the Red Bull Ford power unit?

With Ford’s expanded contribution, the state-of-the-art facilities in Milton Keynes — partly sourced from the well-known Austrian company AVL — and expertise recruited from the likes of Mercedes HPP, Red Bull has at least succeeded in starting this cycle with a competitive power unit.

Naturally, that engine is not the outright benchmark as Wolff suggested, though Rushbrook can laugh about those comments.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Lintao Zhang / LAT Images via Getty Images

“There’s racing, there’s technical, and there’s politics, for sure.”

Rushbrook himself prefers to describe the current situation as Red Bull being “in the mix”, although he finds it difficult to fully assess the competitive picture on the PU side — something the FIA does have to do after the Canadian Grand Prix for the internal combustion engines because of its ADUO system.

However, Rushbrook stresses that the competitive picture of the power units varies under different circumstances.

“I think the conditions certainly have an impact on it, because these power units are certainly sensitive to temperatures and to the environmental conditions. So we are seeing differences in those different conditions, and that’s part of what we need to sort out as well.”

The effect of the conditions is difficult for outsiders to unravel, but Rushbrook emphasises that, in his opinion, the FIA must take this factor into account in any ADUO decisions.

“Obviously, the FIA and F1, they need to look at the data and make those decisions, but they’ve got to do it by looking at the context of it, not just blindly looking at the data. But really understanding what’s contributing to it.”

Asked what Ford exactly means by that “context”, Rushbrook continued: “Just the conditions under which we’re running on track, as I was saying before, the temperatures, the humidity, the environment that you’re racing in, because every power unit has different sensitivity to those conditions.”

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, George Russell, Mercedes

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

However, following lengthy consultations with all the teams and power unit manufacturers, the FIA has decided to keep the procedure for measuring pure ICE power as simple as possible. 

“The calculation is based on a range of factors including input shaft torque, engine speed, MGU-K power and a weighting to account for power sensitivity on lap time across measured laps,” the governing body explained. 

“From the outset, it has been transparently discussed between the FIA and the PU manufacturers, that certain factors that may ultimately affect ICE performance, such as fluid temperatures, external aerodynamics, and similar variables, would be captured as part of the on-car measurements, and that no correction methodology would be applied.”

When looking at its own data, including the effect of different on-track conditions, Red Bull and Ford have a clear idea of what still needs to improve with their own power unit, although understandably the American does not want to share that information publicly.

“We do have a clear picture of that, yes, but that’s not something we want to talk about.”

Finally, he does share Verstappen’s opinion that the Mercedes power unit still remains the benchmark at the start of F1's new era. “Well, yeah, it’s pretty good,” Rushbrook smiled.

Red Bull Ford may not quite be at Mercedes’ level, but its first steps as a power unit manufacturer at the pinnacle of motorsport have been more competitive than some in the paddock expected.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images