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Stories on wheels: why Ford and Red Bull would join their paths from 2026 in Formula 1

2023-02-02T10:57:13.936Z


The energy drink brand landed in the top category of world motorsports when it acquired Jaguar, the last American motorized team.


In 1975, Ferrari was the only one of the thirteen teams participating in Formula 1 that did not have a Ford engine inside.

Thirty years later, the American automaker had lost its last team -Jaguar- at the hands of an energy drink that would win its first title in 2010 and that now, in 2023, is about to announce its agreement to become

Red Bull Ford from 2026

.

On Friday, February 3, in New York, the champion team will present its car for the season that will begin on March 5 in Bahrain and

choosing the United States would not have been random

.

As reported this week, Ford has envoys in the Big Apple to, together with the Austrian team, confirm what is now a rumor.

The return of the Americans only in three years has a justification: the beginning of

hybrid engines

.

And the association, too: the knowledge and support that Ford gives to Red Bull Powertrains, the department that was created in Milton Keynes to build its own engines from 2025, when Honda moves away from F1.

In return, the automaker will receive

the honey of marketing

in the most important category in the world, fulfilling the saying used in motorsports in the United States:

"Win on Sunday, sell on Monday" (Win on Sunday, sell on Monday)

.

The dream.

Ford's Formula 1.

Photo The Qualifier

The curious thing is that the link will be

between those who were the seller and the buyer a little over 18 years ago

.

It is that in November 2004, Dietrich Mateschitz took out of his pocket the dollar with which Red Bull symbolically bought the Jaguar structure, Ford's last official presence in a Formula 1 in which it

never participated as an official team

.

On sale for $1

Jaguar

was one of Ford's British luxury brands and was chosen to land in Formula 1 in the winter of 1999, when Jackie Stewart sold his team.

"I am green with envy"

, were the words chosen by its president, Wolfgang Reitzle, in the presentation.

The reference was to Ferrari, the team that, based on a large sum of money, they wanted to dethrone.

With

Johnny Herbert

, who stayed on the team, and

Eddie Irvine

, who came from Ferrari, as drivers, the R1's debut was on January 9, 2000 in training at the Circuit de Catalunya.

But the car designed by Gary Anderson and powered by, logically, a Ford engine (

the V10 Ford Cosworth CR-2

) did not have the expected result in the debut season.

On the contrary, with only four points, he finished last.

In an era marked by

the overwhelming dominance of the

Prancing Horse

and Michael Schumacher

-winners of five consecutive titles-, Jaguar finished eighth in 2001 and seventh in 2002, with two isolated podiums: those in Irvine in Monaco 2001 and Monza 2002. That seventh position was repeated in 2003 and also in the year of his farewell.

Flawed management left even

Niki Lauda

standing , who started out as an adviser and had been named team boss in the midst of Jaguar's F1 adventure but was added to the payroll of the 70 employees sacked in the 2002 season. That year, in addition, a deadline came from Detroit:

if there was no progress in two years, F1 was over

.

Niki Lauda got back into an F1 car, since his retirement in 1985, in the Jaguar during a 2002 test in Valencia.

Photo AFP PHOTO/PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU

After five years of existence they did not win a race or get a pole position and Ford made good on his threat.

On November 15, 2004, the media reported that the billionaire founder of an Austrian soft drink company had bought the Jaguar team from the Ford group

in exchange for one dollar

, a symbolic price paid on the day the registrations for 2005 closed. .

"It's true, this weekend we bought Jaguar Racing after reaching an agreement with Ford,"

Dietrich Mateschitz

had told

the Salzburger Nachrichten newspaper.

The tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz turned an energy drink brand into a champion F1 team.

Photo HERBERT NEUBAUER / APA / AFP

Only for the first year did Red Bull continue to use Ford-Cosworth engines.

In 2006 he bought them from Ferrari and by the following season he already had the Renaults with which in 2010 he would be world champion for the first time with Sebastian Vettel.

On October 22, 2022, Mateschitz died at age 78.

Three months later, Red Bull is about to partner with Ford.

Ford, a rich history in F1

Henry Ford II wanted to buy the empire built by

Enzo Ferrari

and, since he couldn't, he declared war on the

Scuderia

.

Part of that battle is portrayed in the film

"Against the Impossible"

, which recalls Ford's victory over Ferrari in the historic 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966. A few weeks before that event, in Monaco,

Bruce McLaren

debuted the first McLaren in the F1 powered by Ford

.

Although it never participated in Formula 1 as an official team

, Ford has a rich history built between the 1960s and that 2004 in which it sold Jaguar and never returned.

Perhaps for this reason, Mark Rushbrook, the global director of the Ovalo brand, was encouraged to say in 2018

"never say never"

when asked about a return to the category in which he

was champion for the first time in 1968 motoring a Lotus

.

Graham Hill was the first winner with a Lotus Ford, at the 1967 Dutch GP. A year later, the photo at the Monaco GP.

Five years later, Ford marked a milestone in F1, because in addition to powering the Lotus that won the Constructors' World Championship,

its V8 engine was in the other four teams that made up that top 5 in 1973

, in addition to three that completed the ten best, behind Ferrari (6th) and BRM (7th).

He achieved it

in association with Cosworth

, a union that was a success, because these powerful engines accumulated more than 150 victories and

22 titles, between constructors and pilots

.

However, to achieve it, the action of

Colin Chapman

was essential .

The Lotus Cars founder, F1 team principal and one of the greatest engineers ever

wanted a winning engine

and convinced Ford to give Cosworth co-founder and owner Keith Duckworth a shot at finance and build an engine that would dominate the era.

From the convergence of Ford and Cosworth came the

DFV

, or double four-valve, that is, two 1.8-liter inline four-cylinder engines arranged in a V at a 90° angle.

Although it was not the most powerful engine at the time, because Ferrari had a V12 with more horsepower, the advantage was its weight, among other virtues of its design, such as being bolted to the monocoque behind the driver, without being supported by a tubular chassis, for example.

Winner in Monaco, Le Mans and, in a turbocharged variant, of the Indianapolis 500, the DFV -with its evolutions and adaptations, like the DFY with which it finished its career in 1985-

reigned in F1 for almost two decades

.

In 1975, for example, 12 of the 13 World Cup teams (Brabham, McLaren, Hesketh, Tyrrell, Shadow, Lotus, March, Williams, Parnelli, Hill, Penske and Ensign) had this V8 engine

.

Of course, they all succumbed to the overwhelming pace of Niki Lauda and his Ferrari 312T.

Although James Hunt won the title in a McLaren Ford in 1976 and Mario Andretti did the same in a Lotus Ford in 1978, the advantage was only maintained until the early 1980s, when Alan Jones (Williams), Nelson Piquet (Brabham) and Keke Rosberg (Williams) were the last champions with cars powered by the Americans.

Keke Rosberg, the last champion with a Ford engine, the Williams of the 1982 season.

The advent of turbochargers dethroned those Ford-Cosworth engines and, progressively, the V8s gradually disappeared.

While Ford left F1 in the aforementioned 2004 championship, Cosworth held out until 2013 with the Marussia team.

look also

Formula 1: rumors of Ford joining a giant

The tobacco business in Formula 1: a forbidden romance that managed to carry on

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-02-02

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