Ford will return to F1 in 2026 as an engine builder

Formula 1 doesn’t seem to keep American car companies away. Last month, Cadillac was stunned by news that it wanted him in Formula 1 with Andretti and his team looking to enter the sport. Ford Motor Company has announced today that it will return to Formula 1 from 2026 when new engine rules come into force.

Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford said, “This is a thrilling Ford motorsports story that began when my great-grandfather won a race that helped launch our company. It’s the beginning of a new chapter: “Ford returns to the pinnacle of the sport, bringing Ford’s long tradition of innovation, sustainability and electrification to one of the world’s most visible stages.”

Ford’s first foray into F1 began in 1967 when Lotus boss Colin Chapman persuaded Ford to pay for the development of a new racing engine that would become an integral part of the F1 chassis. I was. (In other words, it was a structural element of the car, rather than attached to a cradle or subframe.) After initial rejection, Chapman persuaded Walter Hayes, his head of PR at Ford UK, I asked him to help me lobby for Suits. As a result, a development budget of £100,000 (approximately $1.7 million today) was given to Cosworth to create the engine.

It was a great investment. The Ford DFV, which stands for ‘Double Four Valves’, remains his most successful F1 engine of all time. Team his Lotus he won four races that year, at which point Ford told Chapman that his DFV was no longer just for his team. Other teams were free to design cars with engines under load, and £7,500 (now about $125,000) could buy a race-winning engine for an F1 team. I made it.

And win the race it did. Between 1967 and his 1985, DFV-equipped cars took part in 262 of his F1 races, winning 155 of them. In 1969 and 1973 only his F1 cars with DFVs won races. And that doesn’t take into account the variations of the engine that came to be used in sports car racing and the F3000 (a series just below F1, now called F2 again).

After the DFV, Ford remained in the sport and was less competitive in the 3.5L and 3.0L era, but had races and championships with Benetton (including Michael Schumacher’s first win and championship) and races won the In 1999 Stewart won with his team and in the 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix Jordan his team took the final victory in chaotic conditions.