The Ford Motor Company recently announced its entrance into a technical partnership with defending Formula One World Champions Red Bull Racing, opening what the company’s executive chairman William Ford termed “an exciting new chapter” in the firm’s long and illustrious motorsports history.
New FIA engine regulations for Formula 1 are scheduled to take effect for 2026, rules whose intent is to alter the distribution of motive force from F1 power units so that the greater portion will come from the hybrid system rather than the internal combustion engine. The next generation of these turbo V6s will still provide in the region of 1,000-hp, but they will generate less of it from internal combustion, and more via the hybrid electronics, making Ford’s expertise in the latter technology a most valuable commodity.
Ford’s F1 story began back in the mid-1960s, when the company’s British arm funded Cosworth Engineering’s creation of what turned out to be the most successful single engine design in F1 history. Cars powered by that Ford-Cosworth DFV won 154 GPs between Jim Clark’s debut triumph with Colin Chapman’s Lotus 49-Cosworth in the 1967 Dutch Grand Prix and Michele Alboreto’s Detroit Grand Prix victory driving Ken Tyrrell’s Tyrrell 011-Ford in 1983.
The new venture will be known as Red Bull Ford Powertrains, with Ford supplying state of the art battery technology for both Red Bull Racing and its associate team AlphaTauri (née Toro Rosso), beginning in 2026 and continuing until at least 2030. With that technically cooperative future now in place, it seemed a good time to revisit the creation of Red Bull Racing itself.
Red Bull’s recently deceased founder Dietrich Mateschitz had put himself in the financial position to be a player in the high-stakes game of Formula 1 by creating the Red Bull energy drink. He’d been a 38-year-old Austrian marketing executive sitting in the bar at Hong Kong’s Mandarin Hotel when he conceived his plan to sell, back home in Europe, the popular energy drinks he’d encountered during his Asian travels. In partnership with Thai businessman Chaleo Yoovidhya, a purveyor of such drinks, Mateschitz then developed the beverage known today as Red Bull, energetically building the brand from virtually nothing into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise.
He called it Red Bull because red is the color of passion, and the bull is the symbol of the astrological sign Taurus, under which Mateschitz had been born. He began marketing his new concoction in Austria in 1987, and before long its popularity had spread to Germany, England and several Eastern European countries before finally appearing in California in 1997 — the first of the 50 American states where it is now sold — and subsequently virtually everywhere.
By the mid-’90s Mateschitz had become a shareholder in and sponsor of Peter Sauber’s eponymous F1 team, but after taking exception with Sauber’s choice of Nick Heidfeld and Kimi Raikkonen as the team’s drivers for 2001, he sold his shares back to Sauber. Having had a taste of F1, however, Mateschitz began exploring opportunities to get back in.
Although it had been sponsoring young drivers in various European championships through its Junior Team program, Red Bull’s own F1 story began in late 2004. Then — having abandoned earlier efforts to acquire the Arrows team from Tom Walkinshaw — Mateschitz purchased the Jaguar F1 operation from Ford, bringing to an end the American automaker’s not always smooth return to F1 that had commenced in the mid-’90s.
Then, three-time World Champion Jackie Stewart had solidified his longstanding ties to the company by securing a factory engine-supply deal for the start-up Stewart Grand Prix organization that was evolving from his son Paul’s feeder-series team, Paul Stewart Racing. After some initial struggles Stewart GP did eventually manage to notch a single F1 victory, claiming the 1999 European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring with Johnny Herbert at the wheel.
By then, however, Jac Nasser had become Ford’s president and CEO, and he elected to buy out Stewart and rebrand the team as Jaguar Racing (Jaguar being a Ford holding at the time) ahead of the 2000 season. Unfortunately, a continuous management reshuffle — involving, among others, three-time Indycar champion Bobby Rahal and three-time World Champion Niki Lauda — could not produce the desired success, and in late 2004 Nasser sold the operation to Mateschitz.
As that process was transpiring, I was fortunate to meet and talk with Mateschitz about his efforts — including an American Driver Search program. He began lightly: “I always say the easiest thing about Formula 1 is buying the team. Then the difficulties begin.”
Ever a marketer at heart, part of his plan was to launch “an all-American Formula 1 team,” which he envisioned as a win-win-win situation benefitting young American F1 aspirants, F1’s efforts to expand its presence in the USA and, of course, Red Bull growing its brand in America.
The all-American idea had been presented to Mateschitz by Maria Jannace of New York-based Maxim Sports Management, who’d been trying to help young American racers reach F1. Implementing the concept, however, depended on seating talented young Americans in the cockpits, but Mateschitz had already discovered that “they are simply not available, so we said we’d start a talent search within the Junior Drivers program to find them by ourselves.
“The USA is the only developed market where Formula 1 doesn’t play the role like everywhere else in the world,” he told me then. “So, we said, there must be a reason. It cannot be because of Formula 1, and on the other side it cannot be because of the U.S. series, which are strong, of course. The reason is because there is no U.S. Formula 1 team.
“So, taking all things together, we said we have our marketing priorities in the United States, and on the other side it’s good for Formula 1 to conquer the most important and remaining market. If you look at merchandising and sponsors, many U.S. companies, multi-national companies, are not in Formula 1 — maybe because it’s not present in their home market. So, we came to the conclusion that it makes sense to follow up on this idea. The only problem is, that to realize this, we need a U.S. car manufacturer to supply engines, whether it’s General Motors, Chrysler or Ford.”
He noted that negotiations with Ford to do just that had been ongoing for some time, but with the company’s decision to sell the Jaguar operation and get out of F1 his mission became clear. He would buy the entire team and build everything else up on that foundation.
To manage his new acquisition, Mateschitz and his primary F1 advisor, fellow Austrian Dr. Helmut Marko, hired Christian Horner as Team Principal. Having abandoned his own driving career at the age of 25, the young Englishman and his brother Garry created the Arden International outfit for the 1999 season of the FIA’s Formula 3000 championship. By 2003, Arden had become F3000’s dominant team, with Swede Björn Wirdheim claiming that year’s crown and Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi — sponsored by Red Bull and managed by Marko — taking the 2004 title. It was an excellent example of everything being in the right place at the right time so that all the pieces of the puzzle could fall readily into their proper places.
Red Bull Racing’s first Grand Prix appearance came in Melbourne’s 2005 Australian GP, with veteran Scottish driver David Coulthard and Jaguar holdover Christian Klein in the cockpits of the pair of Red Bull RB1s powered by 3-liter Cosworth V10s. Coulthard finished fourth that day, one of two just-off-the-podium finishes that were his high-water marks among 10 top-10 placings that year. During his second season in Red Bull colors, the square-jawed Scot managed to stand on the third step of the podium in Monaco, the best of his seven top-10 placings with the by then Ferrari-engined RB2.
Red Bull had switched to Ferrari customer power as F1’s engine formula changed to adopt naturally aspirated 2.4-liter V8s. The Italian engines were said to run hot and proved unreliable, however, resulting in the contract being transferred to Red Bull’s sister squad, Toro Rosso, for 2007, which allowed the main team to embrace Renault’s latest RS27 V8. Toro Rosso had come into the picture when Mateschitz acquired the struggling Minardi operation from its final owner, Paul Stoddart, and rebranded the Italian team with the words for Red Bull in Italian. Interestingly, Scuderia Toro Rosso would taste F1 victory before Red Bull, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
For that 2007 season, Coulthard continued alongside new teammate Mark Webber, both men running strongly in the midfield that year and the next. During the 2008 campaign, Red Bull’s F1 future came into clearer focus as the top talent from the Junior Team program was seated at Toro Rosso and sprang a surprise on everyone with a dominant victory from pole position on hallowed ground at Monza’s Italian Grand Prix. That talent was, of course, Sebastian Vettel.
The young German — who at age 17 had decimated his home country’s 2004 Formula BMW Championship with 18 victories from 20 starts — moved up to the main team for 2009 following Coulthard’s retirement from F1, settling immediately in alongside Australian incumbent Webber. Vettel finished second and Webber fourth in that year’s final point standings behind the new champion, British Brawn GP driver Jenson Button.
Then the fun began. Arriving under Red Bull’s burgeoning umbrella at this time was ace British designer Adrian Newey, who took over as the team’s Chief Technical Officer. Newey’s design resumé included five World Championship-winning cars from his tenure at Williams, and a sixth subsequently for McLaren. Vettel snuggled comfortably into Newey’s new Renault-powered RB6 for 2010, winning five races on his way to the World Championship as he became F1’s youngest champion ever at 23 years and 133 days. Teammate Webber did his part as well, with four wins of his own to help Red Bull collect its first Constructors Championship.
That script would go quickly into reruns. In 2011, Vettel won 11 races with the RB7-Renault and waltzed to the title, with Webber winning once and again ranking third as the team bagged its second constructors crown. Little changed for 2012, as Vettel wheeled his RB8-Renault to five wins and five other podium placings to secure his and the team’s World Championship hat tricks. The fourth consecutive championship was the most dominant of all, as while taking 13 victories in the RB9-Renault Vettel started nine races from pole (Webber added two) and notched seven fastest laps (five more for Webber).
In mainstream team sports we often hear about organizations “building a culture” for winning, and that very concept was also central to the plans Mateschitz had for Red Bull Racing. The team’s string of successes had been built upon the base of continuing physical preparation for the drivers akin to the mechanical perfection being built into the cars.
Dr. Marko had laid the groundwork for success by imbuing Red Bull’s driver development program with his belief that good enough is not good enough. After earning his Doctorate of Law degree, Marko took up racing professionally, subsequently teaming with Dutchman Gijs van Lennep to give Porsche its second overall win at Le Mans in 1971.
He then competed in F1 for BRM before a stone thrown up by another car during the ’72 French GP at Clermont-Ferrand shattered his helmet’s visor and his dreams, taking the sight from his left eye and ending his promising career. Turning his attention to driver and team management, Marko ultimately hooked up with Mateschitz.
“We have had the Red Bull Junior Team concept for some time,” he explained as we discussed the U.S. Driver Search. “The Americans are simply being brought into this program and they have to be compared to the rest of the world, because ultimately they will have to compete against the rest of the world.”
Of course, Red Bull Racing didn’t start out as — or turn out to be — an American team, but the Driver Search program was duly put in place with the intention of discovering a selection of talented young Americans with F1 ambitions.
The top U.S. driver to emerge from the Search was Californian Scott Speed, who in 2004 had become the first American driver ever to win a European junior formula championship by claiming both the European and German Formula Renault crowns. He eventually contested the 2006 and 2007 F1 seasons with Toro Rosso, but his best results were a pair of ninth-place finishes and his seat was ultimately taken by Sebastian Vettel. Scott did, however, continue to benefit from Red Bull sponsorship during three further seasons in NASCAR.
Another crucial element of the Junior Team and Driver Search programs was the young driver fitness regimen created by Dr. Bernd Pansold, who had once trained East German Olympians. Dr. Pansold believed that attention must be paid not only to the body, but also the mind. “Performance in sport is a very complex thing,” he offered. “It is not possible to isolate one part from the system. The physical is one part, the psyche is another, and the third part is the ability to coordinate these things.”
Collecting detailed individual information via his intense physical and biological testing regimen — jokingly characterized by one participant as “blood, sweat and tears” — allowed Pansold to compare psycho-motoric performance and determine what actions would produce quantifiable improvements. Also, let us not forget that although similar driver conditioning programs may be prevalent in these modern times, such was not the case when Red Bull implemented its version some 20 years ago.
After Vettel’s fourth world title in 2013, everything changed. The latest engine regulations specified turbocharged 1.6-liter V6s incorporating kinetic energy recovery systems, and throughout a winless 2014 season Vettel found himself being made uncompetitive by both the impact of the new rules and the emergent successes of incoming champion Lewis Hamilton and his Mercedes-Benz team. As he’d also been outraced by his new Australian teammate Daniel Ricciardo — Webber had left the team following a contract dispute — Vettel opted to accept a generous offer from Ferrari to join the legendary Italian marque for 2015.
“It’s not a decision based on the current results,” he was quoted as saying at the time, “it’s more a voice inside me that kept growing, and it’s a step that I’m very much looking forward to.”
Vettel would win 13 races for The Scuderia over the course of the next four seasons, but no championships. He then left Ferrari to join Aston Martin, before retiring from F1 at the end of last season. His career total of 53 Grand Prix victories ranks him third, behind only Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher, on the all-time winners list.
Heeding the call of “next man up,” Red Bull shifted Daniil Kvyat from Toro Rosso into the vacant seat alongside Ricciardo for 2015. The young Russian, however, made just 23 starts for the main team over two seasons before returning to Toro Rosso in a straight swap for Dutch coming-man Max Verstappen, son of retired F1 racer Jos Verstappen.
Earlier in 2016, with Toro Rosso, Verstappen had become the youngest driver ever to start a Grand Prix — 17 years and 166 days — and he validated his subsequent promotion to the parent team by winning his debut race, in Spain, then finishing fifth in the final points. The Spanish win was not only the first Grand Prix triumph for a driver from The Netherlands, but it also made him the youngest winner in F1 history at 18 years, 227 days. He proceeded to win two GPs in each of 2017 and 2018, ending up sixth in the championship both years with TAG-Heuer-branded Renault engines powering Newey’s RB13 and RB14 chassis, respectively.
Riccardo, who’d won seven GPs during his five seasons with the team, left to join Renault after the 2018 campaign, his place being taken first by Frenchman Pierre Gasly (12 starts) and then Thai driver Alex Albon (9 starts). For 2019, Red Bull switched to factory Honda power, which helped Verstappen win twice and finish third in the championship — behind Mercedes teammates Hamilton and Valterri Bottas — with Albon standing on two podiums of his own to claim seventh in the points.
Verstappen matched those tallies again in 2020, as did Albon, who got a full season but would become the team’s third driver in 2021 (before moving on to Williams for 2022). Albon’s race seat was taken by veteran Mexican pilot Sergio Perez as Red Bull stepped back from its in-house driver development pathway to take on a driver whose experience had been accumulated elsewhere.
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic the teams had agreed to field updated 2020 cars in 2021, rather than build new ones. After a down-to-the-wire season Red Bull RB16B-Honda-mounted Verstappen gained his first World Championship following a disputed ruling late in the Abu Dhabi season finale that allowed him to wrest both race victory and season’s crown from Hamilton’s grasp with 10 wins to the Briton’s eight.
For 2022, however, there was no argument. With its new RB18, Red Bull Racing dominated the proceedings as Verstappen rewrote F1’s record book with 15 victories from the season’s 22 Grands Prix, and Perez added a further pair of his own wins to rank third in the points.
Now, the 2023 season is in full swing, and if the opening weekend in Bahrain is any indication — first and second in both qualifying and the race for Verstappen and Perez — Red Bull still appears to be the quickest of the quick, with everyone else left once again in catch-up mode. The team’s 93rd Grand Prix victory was a perfect way to begin its 19th season in F1.
In any case, it looks as if Ford’s new partnership with Red Bull will be both positive and productive, further expanding the USA’s growing involvement in F1, which includes the three U.S. Grands Prix – Austin, Miami and Las Vegas — the commercial-free live ESPN/ABC broadcasts of the races themselves and the fine Netflix series, Drive to Survive, a behind-the-scenes look inside the sport that’s also helping to grow F1’s American audience. Hang on tight race fans, we seem to have a future filled with promise.
