Formula 1 Tech In Your Ford? Red Bull Deal Should Deliver the Goods

Ford's renewed push on its professional racing activities begins this weekend in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship's season-opening race. The Detroit-based manufacturer will field several of its new Mustang GT3 purpose-built race cars in one of sports car racing's biggest 24-hour endurance challenges, as well as the ensuing full IMSA campaign. Two will run as factory efforts by Ford and its partner, Multimatic Motorsports, in the GTD Pro class, with a third car fielded by customer team Proton Competition in the GTD class that features pro and amateur drivers sharing duty as day cycles into night, and back again.

"We race for two very specific reasons," Ford CEO Jim Farley said to a media group less than two weeks prior to the Rolex 24, during a Ford Performance season-launch event in and around Charlotte, N.C. "The first is that we want racing, more and more, to inform our production vehicles. ... We actually want to sell street [legal] race cars [like the upcoming 800-horsepower, GT3-inspired Mustang GTD road car], lots of them. We don't want to make generic vehicles at Ford anymore."

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That comes as good news to car enthusiasts looking for compelling products in large sea of commodity-car blandness, but Farley was just getting started.

"We've [shrunk] the company around the most profitable vehicles [we make], and our passion vehicles. What we have left is the things we do naturally well—we really do work vehicles well, [vehicles like Transits and Super Dutys and Rangers]. We're No. 1 in pickup trucks in almost every market.

"And the second thing is, we really want to transition our racing effort into a sustainable business, so that it isnot justa marketing expense. And a lot of companies have been able to do that, like Porsche, Mazda, where they run a [customer] business [in] racing [from which lots of people buy their race cars]. ... We want Ford Performance and our enthusiasts to be the essence of our company, and that [racing business] should be self-sustaining [no matter who runs this company now or in the future].

"We are going to get out of the business of making generic vehicles," Farley doubled down. "We are going to lean into Broncos and Mustangs and work vehicles and derivatives like Mustang GTD that people love. That's my vision. ... What you'll see Ford [concentrate on] more and more as a company are work vehicles and passion vehicles."

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From the launch of the new S650 seventh-generation Mustang last year to Farley's words today, Ford has made it known the Mustang is the backbone of its global racing strategy, from the IMSA and WEC sports-car championships to other GT3 and GT4 series to NASCAR to Formula Drift to NHRA drag racing to Australian Supercars. There's even a new standalone one-make Mustang Challenge Series kicking off in June, with race one scheduled for Mid-Ohio. On the truck and dirt-racing side, the company will continue to contest the World Rally Championship and support its off-road Raptors and Broncos in grueling contests like the Dakar Rally and King of the Hammers.

It's certainly a logical business case at a time when various motorsports series are experiencing renewed interest and audience growth. However, Ford's announcement almost precisely a year ago that it was joining forces with Red Bull Racing in Formula 1, beginning in 2026, hasn't necessarily been widely received by some corners of the fanbase and F1 media as anything more than "a badging deal."

In other words, the cynics—with good reason, given certain other companies' half-hearted and cynical forays into grand prix racing over the years—foresee a reality wherein Red Bull essentially creates all its chassis and powertrains, and Ford pays to put its name on the cars. That scenario would recall when Infiniti branding not too long ago featured prominently on previous Red Bull and Renault grand prix machinery. Farley, though, insists this isn't Ford's approach and that the deal is all about real technology transfer between the two organizations.

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"We get aerodynamic expertise from them, and with big batteries on electric production vehicles, aero is becoming much more important for a company," he said during Ford Performance's season-launch event. "You're going to see the shapes of vehicles change a lot in pure electric vehicles, because the aero has such a big impact on shrinking the battery size and making the vehicles affordable. So we need the best aero people in the world, and they happen to be in Formula 1.

"And also, with telemetry and the other advanced software, Formula 1 really allows us to learn how to test and develop new software for our vehicles. On the other hand, Red Bull gets battery tech [from Ford]. High-discharge batteries from our NHRA racing is super attractive to Formula 1 because [the series] is going to 50-percent electric powertrains in 2026, so the electric portion of what we do is very attractive to them. Yes, we'll use the drivers [for marketing], but really this is a tech transfer. But it's not a case of, we're going to invest $600 million in Formula 1 so we can [use the marketing to] sell a bunch of cars on Monday. It's not what we're doing. This is old-school tech transfer."

Speaking more on the subject later during an exclusive interview withMotorTrend, Farley offered more details. "The most important thing people can't see—because they justcan't see it—is the technical exchange that's going on now," he said. "I raced a GT40 with [Red Bull tech guru] Adrian Newey at the Daytona Historic 24, and we spent 48 hours talking about the health of our technical exchange. That's really what matters. And it's natural [some people might think the way they do about our deal] because it's not 2026 yet. We can't show everyone.

"I can't show you what our gen-two electric vehicles look like and why the aerodynamics that we're learning from Red Bull Racing and Adrian's aero team looks like it does. But we will see that when we get on the track and when people see the high-discharge batteries that come actually from NHRA and some of our specialty battery companies. It's going to be a big advantage, we think, versus the off-the-shelf high-discharge battery most of the Formula 1 paddock buys. Then they'll understand.

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"There's also the telemetry and all the diagnostic stuff we'll put in our production cars; all the AI used to diagnose things before they happen—that's hard for people to see. I don't expect people on F1 message boards [or the commentators on the grand prix TV broadcasts] to really understand that, and they don't even understand how important that is. But we spent $3 billion on recalls last year, so it's important for us to find technical problems with our cars before they happen. And that's just maybe more important for shareholders than it would be for other people or the fans. But the technical exchange is really going to show up in how competitive we are in '26 and how much Red Bull influences Ford.

"And there's one other really important thing: fuel. Working with Exxon on the new, cleaner, [100-percent sustainable] fuel for 2026. It's not like these other racing series, where there's one fuel. Every brand, every Formula 1 team, has a different fuel. We have a very close relationship with Exxon, especially in racing. I talk to Dan Ammann all the time; he used to be president of General Motors. He's now there doing all Exxon's low-carbon stuff. There are a lot of personal relationships between all of us to make sure they're successful at Red Bull.

"No, we're not going to buy a $600 million team," Farley reiterated. "We don't want to run a Formula 1 team. We've done all that. We've done it like, twice, and it didn't work out well. We're just being opportunistic [with the tech that matters today]. And if people see that, great. If they don't, the truth will come out whether we help win or not."

In the meantime, the 2024 F1 season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix is scheduled for March 2.