The real 2026 cars are yet to be revealed<\/a> and a big focus through the event was on the engine side, with Ford joining the new Red Bull Powertrains company as a partner for the 2026 rules.<\/p>\nSet up by Red Bull itself with Ford joining afterwards and supporting with some staff and equipment, Red Bull Powertrains is a specialist company that has grown to more than 700 employees and three factories over the last few years – but as a new F1 manufacturer, the odds are against it being the benchmark.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Red Bull Racing CEO and team principal Laurent Mekies said the first season with the team\u2019s own engine \u201ccomes with a few headaches, a few sleepless nights, but that\u2019s what fuels us\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing into the first year, going to the first race soon, and thinking to be straight away at the level of the [established] competitors would be naive,\u201d said Mekies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know it\u2019s going to be with a fair amount of struggles, headaches, sleepless nights.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will go through the struggle. We will eventually come out on top.<\/p>\n
\u201cBear with us in the first few months. These initial difficulties will be a good reminder of how much we went through to eventually get on top.\u201d<\/p>\n
The messaging was slightly more mixed from Ford\u2019s side, depending on whether it was focused on the short-term or bigger picture.<\/p>\n
Ford executive chairman Bill Ford\u2019s claim that \u201ctogether, we\u2019re going to be unstoppable\u201d was therefore a very bold thing to say on stage – and it clashed slightly with the more cautious immediate messaging from others.<\/p>\n
Jim Farley, Ford\u2019s CEO, said \u201cI don\u2019t think anyone truly understands what a mountain it [is] to climb\u201d for example – and described this project as an \u201cunderdog\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The challenge is] Ford knows exactly what we need to do to support the Red Bull team,\u201d said Farley on stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the most important thing, that we know exactly how we can help, and make the first race and first part of the season a success.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re looking for, the clarity of our work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Until pre-season testing, there will not be any clues about where the new engine really stacks up.<\/p>\n
Red Bull Ford Powertrains technical director Ben Hodgkinson produced an unusual analogy for this as he described it as like running a 400-metre race but in a stadium, alone, in a different country to the competition – and all he knows is they are running as fast as they can.<\/p>\n
Hodgkinson\u2019s experience includes being a key figure at Mercedes High Performance Powertrains when that engine proved the clear benchmark for the start of the last new engine rules era in 2014.<\/p>\n
That is one of the reasons Red Bull hired Hodgkinson in the first place . He knows what a great engine company looks like and what good or bad preparation is – so all he is talking up is that side of things, not performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve got all the ingredients, whether it will turn into a Michelin meal, we’ll have to see,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m confident that we’ve built the right company and got the right people.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think confidence is something that somebody is about to lose will have, so you’re not going to get more from me than that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ford claimed that it and Red Bull will be \u201cunstoppable\u201d with its new engine partnership beginning in 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-416279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}