Bill Ford, the executive chairman of major American car manufacturer Ford Motor Company, hit back at the CEO of Cadillac F1 Team, Dan Towriss, for his recent comments calling Ford\u2019s partnership with Red Bull \u201ca marketing deal.\u201d Ford feels differently, saying to The Athletic of Cadillac F1, \u201cIf anything looks like a marketing effort, that does.\u201d<\/p>\n
This season, Ford is rejoining the Formula One grid for the first time since leaving Jaguar Racing after the 2004 season, when Red Bull acquired the team. For the past three years, Ford has worked with Red Bull to develop the new power unit for 2026, a year when the technical regulations are changing significantly.<\/p>\n
General Motors is also joining the grid this season, as Cadillac becomes the sport\u2019s 11th team. When comparing GM\u2019s involvement in F1 to Ford\u2019s, Towriss felt there was a substantial difference in scale.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not even close,\u201d Towriss said. \u201cOne is a marketing deal with very minimal impact, while GM is an equity owner (in the Cadillac team). 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
Ford told The Athletic that when he saw the remarks from GM, he \u201cwas stunned\u201d and \u201cstarted to laugh,\u201d calling it \u201cpatently absurd.\u201d<\/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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Athletic has reached out to Cadillac F1 for comment.<\/p>\n
Will Ford, the general manager for Ford Performance, echoed Bill\u2019s comments, adding, \u201cNothing could be further from the truth, in terms of our partnership with Red Bull being a marketing effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the company, Ford Racing engineers are working at Milton Keynes with the Red Bull Powertrains team, and Ford team members in Dearborn, Michigan, are providing support. One area Ford has contributed to is 3D-printed parts for the power unit, which have reduced parts production times during development. But it\u2019s also extended to tools and software developed by Ford members that support battery cell management, battery deployment, and engine calibration.<\/p>\n
Creating a new power unit is complex, and electrification will increase in this generation. It\u2019s taken significant collaboration to create a Red Bull Ford power unit, with the two sides partnering on areas such as the energy reserve system.<\/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,\u201d Will said to The Athletic. \u201cBut we made a very deliberate decision to form Red Bull Ford Powertrains, as a true technical partnership and really complement the audacious e\ufb00ort that Red Bull decided to set down on in developing their own power unit.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we found the areas where Ford can uniquely complement the skills and capabilities that Red Bull has, given the size and breadth and technical expertise within our organization, with the intention of creating the best power unit in F1, just like we did in decades past.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bill Ford, the executive chairman of major American car manufacturer Ford Motor Company, hit back at the CEO…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,12716,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-409660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-motorsports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}