First design
Site Theme
Formula 1 simply doesn’t seem to be able to keep American automakers away. Last month, we were surprised to learn that Cadillac was looking to enter F1 with the Andretti team, which is to enter the sport. While that offer remains uncertain, here’s one that isn’t: Today, Ford Motor Company revealed it will return to F1 from 2026, when the new engine regulations come into effect.
“This is the beginning of an exciting new bankruptcy in Ford’s motorsport history that began when my great-grandfather won a race that helped drive our business forward,” said Bill Ford, Ford’s chief executive. bring Ford’s longstanding culture of innovation, sustainability and electrification to one of the world’s most important visual milestones. “
Ford’s first foray into F1 began in 1967 when Lotus boss Colin Chapman convinced Ford to pay for the progression of a new racing engine that would be an active component of the F1 chassis. (In other words, it was a structural detail of the car being fixed in a cradle or subframe. ) After being driven back, Chapman convinced Walter Hayes, Ford UK’s public relations manager, to help him fit the suits, and the result was a progression budget of £100,000 (around £1. 7 million today) given to Cosworth to create the engine.
It was an investment. The Ford DFV, for “double 4 valves”, remains the fullest-capacity F1 engine of all time. Team Lotus won 4 races that year, at which point Ford told Chapman that the DFV was no longer exclusive to his team. Drop to design your cars with engines under pressure, and for £7,500 (around $125,000 today) you can buy a winning engine for your F1 team.
And he won races. Between 1967 and 1985, DFV-powered cars competed in 262 F1 races and won 155 of them. In 1969 and 1973, only DFV-powered F1 cars won races. And that’s not counting the engine variants that were later used in sports car racing. or in the F3000 (which the series just below F1, is now renamed F2).
After DFV, Ford remained in the sport, and was never more competitive in the 3. 5L and 3. 0L eras, winning races and a championship with Benetton (including early wins and Michael Schumacher’s championship), as well as a career. victory in 1999 with the Stewart team and a definitive victory in quite chaotic situations at the 2003 Brazilian Grand Prix with the Jordan team.
Join the Ars Orbital Transmission email to get weekly updates to your inbox.