How Red Bull owes its F1 future - and past - to Ford

Without wanting to wish time away, there's only a year and two months before Formula 1's 2026 regulations are officially in force. The landscape of the championship will change significantly, and not just as a result of the sea change in both car and powertrain regulations; Honda makes its full return as partner to Aston Martin, Alpine will no longer be classed as a manufacturer team (and likely boast Mercedes power units in the back), and Audi will make its debut as a manufacturer squad when Sauber is rebranded.

It's also going to be a very different place at Red Bull. The 2026 car will be the first not overseen by Adrian Newey since the team's sophomore RB2 effort, effectively the first car designed by Red Bull as an entity rather than it being a reliveried Jaguar. The energy drink giant will also have ended its reliance on other manufacturers to inject its cars with the requisite power; Red Bull Powertrains will produce its first ground-up power unit for the advent of the new regulations.

In a supporting role, with naming rights on the engine package, is Ford. The Blue Oval will return to an F1 engine cover after 22 years away, following its wide-ranging exit from F1 at the end of 2004. Ford has been a valuable source of expertise and resources to Red Bull; it has not only guidance and assisted with the development of the hybrid components, but also has become involved in the development of the turbocharger and through simulation tools. Red Bull needs its first powertrain to be competitive out of the box; it has hired significant talent from the other powertrain manufacturers on the grid to make that happen, but has also been able to collaborate with Ford's brightest and best.

In F1 history terms, the Red Bull/Ford tie-up is a neat one. Without Ford, Red Bull would have a lot more work on its hands to ensure its 2026 powertrain is competitive. And, without Ford, Red Bull would likely not exist in its current form - and potentially didn't, had events 20 years ago taken a slightly different slant.

Red Bull's purchase of Jaguar, Ford's works outfit, at the tail end of 2004 is one of F1's great success stories. Here was a team that, in its early years, was hindered by a bloated management structure that seemed to work completely at odds with the dynamism needed to operate a successful racing team. F1 teams need to react to developments quickly, and autonomy must be allowed - to a certain degree - on a departmental basis to ensure the team can chase performance. What teams do not need is to have to seek approval for everything, even on a micro level, purely to satisfy the nebulous idea of "the brand way". 

To go from Stewart, which ran with that race-team ethos instilled by Sir Jackie Stewart, to the layers of bureaucracy levied upon it by Ford, was a marked difference to those who worked at the team.

Jaguar's short stint on the F1 grid came to an end at the conclusion of the 2004 season

Photo by: Martyn Elford / Motorsport Images

That's largely why Jaguar was so poor in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Only after the fat was trimmed did the team start to enjoy a slight uptick in performance; Ford cared less about the team in 2003 and 2004 and, funnily enough, the green cars looked a little less languid on the track. Case in point: Mark Webber slapped the car on the second row twice in 2003, and parked it on the front row at the 2004 Malaysian Grand Prix; race performance generally tailed off, but the team had at least started to understand the effect of managing resources efficiently.

The performances were still poor enough for Ford to eventually pull the plug on the Jaguar project. But here's the sliding doors moment: before Red Bull assumed control of the team in November 2004, Ford was closer to a rebrand rather than a sale. "Ford Grand Prix" was a very real possibility for the 2005 season.

As reported by Autosport in the 9 September 2004 edition of the magazine, Ford would have retained controlling interest in the team. To offset that, there was capacity to sell off a minority stake in the team to other investors, freeing up budget to make a proper stab at F1. The crux of this was that the Ford Motor Company had invested millions in F1 under a subsidiary brand; it felt that it was not getting the proper return on its investment that could boost its flagship operation. Rebranding the team appeared to be the best way around this.

Horner was still seeking to find a way into F1, but it was not going to be entirely on his own terms with Arden thanks to the failed negotiations with Jordan

While the Jaguar team's fortunes had improved slightly across 2003 and 2004, it was still conspicuously underwhelming. Even with reduced funding, it was operating with the resources and finances of one of the world's biggest automotive firms, and barely cracking the points on a regular basis. Unless Ford had truly learned from its micromanagement of the team, it was likely that adding more funding back to the team was going to be met with more interest from the bean-counters at the Dearborn headquarters.

It was mere weeks later that Ford decided it was going to sell up. Furthermore, Jaguar's fate was also inextricably tied to that of Jordan; Eddie Jordan's squad had been strong-armed out of a potential customer Mercedes deal by Ford only a year prior, amid threats of an F1 manufacturer breakaway series.

This was quelled when Ford thrashed out a deal with the other manufacturers to let it assume sole supply of the independent teams in Jordan and Minardi, killing off a potential Mercedes deal. Now, Jordan was left without an engine supplier for 2005. Regardless, Eddie Jordan was looking to sell; the team was floundering, and the increased manufacturer force had only cemented his decision to say goodbye to his eponymous team.

This partial tangent is relevant as, among the suitors looking to buy Jordan, was a Formula 3000 team by name of Arden - owned and run by a certain Christian Horner. Arden had also been linked as a separate bidder for the ashes of Jaguar, for which Ford demanded an up-front fee and funding guarantees for the next few seasons in order to sanction a sale.

The Midland Group made it onto the F1 grid, albeit in 2006 with the former Jordan outfit, after Horner's attempts to take it over failed

Photo by: Midland F1 Racing

In the 7 October 2004 issue of Autosport, it reported that "Red Bull, a Russian-led consortium (later identified as the Midland Group), and General Motors" were in the frame to purchase Jaguar. Horner and Arden were now being linked with Jordan, which was on the verge of securing its own future with a Toyota customer engine deal.

Apart from GM's investigation into joining F1, a notion that is still yet to be realised amid its involvement with the prospective Andretti Cadillac entry, the rest all had their own parts to play in the following F1 season. Red Bull accelerated negotiations with Ford and purchased the team for a reported £1.6 million up-front fee, plus guaranteeing the funding stipulated by Ford to run the team.

At the time, Horner was in talks with Jordan, but neither side could agree on a fee to take over the Silverstone-based outfit. In came Midland, a steel magnate owned by Russo-Canadian Alex Shnaider, who purchased the team on the eve of the 2005 season. The team raced as Midland in 2006, selling up to the Dutch-owned Spyker Cars midway through the year, later changing hands to Indian businessman Vijay Mallya. It continues as Aston Martin to this day.

Horner was still seeking to find a way into F1, but it was not going to be entirely on his own terms with Arden thanks to the failed negotiations with Jordan. Instead, it was a chance meeting years before that eventually led to him taking over as Red Bull team principal.

When running Arden, Horner visited a fellow team owner residing in Graz to pay for a trailer that happened to be for sale. The seller was the team principal of rival F3000 squad RSM Marko, Dr Helmut Marko.

When Marko's team folded at the end of 2002, his Red Bull Junior drivers were run by Coloni for a year before Vitantonio Liuzzi was sent to Arden for 2004. The links forged with Horner, as Liuzzi set new records on his way to the final F3000 title, led Marko to recommend the then-32-year-old to Red Bull GmbH CEO Dietrich Mateschitz.

Had Ford not sold up to Red Bull, the landscape may have looked very different; Ford might have continued for a couple more years and then fully withdrawn when the global financial crisis hit in 2008, Jordan might have become Arden, and Red Bull's current legacy of titles might not have been realised in quite the same fashion.

A fresh-faced Christian Horner arrives in F1 with Red Bull - and a certain Guenther Steiner

Photo by: LAT Photographic

Red Bull relied on Ford to sell for that success, and now it's relying on Ford for its future. The challenge of developing an in-house powertrain is of a magnitude that Red Bull has not experienced before; Horner estimates that around 600 people have been hired to get the project off the ground. Having Ford's involvement will be a huge factor in smoothing over the early cracks as Red Bull Powertrains gets its head around the operational strains of running an F1 powertrain manufacturer entity.

"That relationship is working very well," Horner reckons. "But inevitably there will be short term pain, but there is a long term gain of having everything under one roof with engineers. We've already seen the benefit and the difference of having chassis and engine engineers sitting essentially next to each other as we start to integrate the ‘26 engine into the ‘26 car."

It's a union that's 20 years in the making - and both will hope that it rewards long-term success across the next 20.

Now Red Bull embarks on a future with Ford, having taken over from the manufacturer's own F1 interest

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool