The two marques entertain a long-running rivalry both on and off the track, most notably competing for decades in NASCAR racing. Before the start of winter testing, the two camps have already started trading barbs as they are set to fight out their feud on F1’s battlefield.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac F1 CEO Dan Towriss downplayed Ford’s actual involvement, labelling it as “a marketing deal with very minimal impact, while GM is an equity owner. They\u2019re deeply embedded from an engineering standpoint, and they were involved from day one. Those two deals couldn\u2019t be more different.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Cadillac's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/cadillac-f1-team-ceo-dan-towri.jpg\")
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Cadillac’s F1 effort is led by CEO Dan Towriss and team principal Graeme Lowdon<\/p>\n
Photo by: Kym Illman \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
Speaking to The Athletic, Ford executive chairman Bill Ford laughed off Towriss’ comments, calling them, “patently absurd” and saying he “was stunned” when he first heard them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say, actually, the reverse is true,\u201d Ford said. \u201cThey\u2019re running a Ferrari engine. They\u2019re not running a Cadillac engine. I don\u2019t know if they have any GM employees on the race team. If anything looks like a marketing effort, that does.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bill Ford’s son Will, who is the general manager of Ford Performance, similarly dismissed Cadillac’s comparison. \u201cNothing could be further from the truth, in terms of our partnership with Red Bull being a marketing effort,” he told The Athletic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could have spent a lot of money to slap our logo on a car, or to put our name alongside a team. But we made a very deliberate decision to form Red Bull Ford Powertrains as a true technical partnership, and really complement the audacious effort that Red Bull decided to set down on in developing their own power unit.”<\/p>\n
Ford is set to unveil its 2026 partnership with Red Bull Racing<\/a> and sister team Racing Bulls<\/a> at a season launch in Detroit on Thursday night, while Cadillac will unveil its 2026 livery during a Superbowl half-time ad on 8 February. The Graeme Lowdon-led squad, which is partly owned by parent company General Motors, recently revealed its stealthy one-off livery for F1’s Barcelona shakedown at the end of this month.<\/p>\n Read Also:<\/p>\n We want your opinion!<\/p>\n What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?<\/p>\n