Red Bull X Ford Racing

To align with the new regulations in Formula One for the 2026 season, Red Bull has switched engine providers to, well, themselves with a bit of help from Ford.

"125 years ago my great grandfather, Henry Ford, won a race right here in Detroit to help launch the Ford Motor Company. Ford has a story in formula one, now we’re here to write the next chapter with Red bull" Said Bill Ford.

Ford executive chairman Bill Ford vows that the new partnership will be unstoppable, whilst Red Bull Racing team principal Laurent Mekies has asked that fans give the team time and bear with them.

Isack Hadjar, Max Verstappen and Laurent Mekies stood next to the 2026 car. Photo from Red Bull content pool.

“Starting from scratch going into the first year, going to the first race soon and thinking to be straight away at the level of the competition, who have been doing it for 90 years some of them, would be naive. We know it’s going to be with a fair amount of struggles, headaches, sleepless nights. We will to through the struggle. We will eventually come out on top, bear with us in the first few months.” Said Mekies at the Red Bull X Ford Racing official livery launch in Detroit, the home of Ford Racing.

For the past 4 years at Red Bulls Milton Keynes HQ they have built extra facilities to accommodate their long term idea of building their own engines for their cars. RBPT director Ben Hodgkinson, formerly of Mercedes High Performance Powertrains, has spearheaded the design.

“We're super proud of our partnership with Ford and it is very much a partnership. The vast majority of my team are from the industry. Putting 700 people together in a short space of time.. I couldn't find everybody I wanted, so that left a few holes. Ford have managed to provide some people to patch a few of those holes, which has been great, so yeah, there's a direct involvement. So it makes it absolutely fair to call it a partnership. If Ford go knocking on the door, people answer. So having that name associated with us has been very, very useful indeed.” Ben said whilst live on the livery reveal.

Max Verstappens Red Bull Livery For 2026. Image From Red Bull Content Pool.

Red Bull making their own engine has been a longstanding dream of their late founder Dietrich Mateschitz. Dietrich who sadly passed away in 2022 purchased the Jaguar F1 team in 2004 and rebranded it to Red Bull.

"It is his vision, his boldness, he released the Red Bull spirit that is the reason we are all here today. He made that unbelievable decision at the time to put us onto the route of being completely independent with both the chassis and the power unit. He was not scared by the scale of the challenge, and today, we have our opportunity to pay tribute to him and hopefully, to make him proud." Mekies said to the RBR livery reveal livestream.

"The team have done an incredible job to be here today and be in the position to go to Barcelona shakedown with our own car and own power unit for the first time ever. This is the result of 2000 people at the Red bull technology campus,the most talented group that you can find and they’ve been working together to get us to this moment. It’s the beginning of an extremely exciting journey for all of us and we’ll take to the track as one.” Said Mekies.

Only time will tell whether or not the teams hard work pays off.