60 Years of Ford in Formula 1

Ford’s first foray into F1 came via its engines. Between 1963 and 1966, Ford built straight-four motors that were sold to fledgling teams in the sport. Outfits like Canadian Stebro Racing and David Prophet Racing ran cars that used the 1,500 CC Ford engine.

The cars in question were machines like the Brabham BT6, the Stebro Mk4 and even the McLaren M2B, which was fielded by the historic racing outfit in the 1966 season.

After working to build its own engines for most of the 1960s, Ford soon decided that it was in need of some assistance if it wanted to take things up a gear. As such, it called on the small British engineering firm that had previously consulted on the designs for certain high-performance parts in the Ford Cortina GT. This was, of course, Cosworth, which Ford tasked with building a 3.0-liter engine for Formula One.

The engine that Cosworth cooked up was unveiled ahead of the 1967 Dutch Grand Prix, where it powered Jim Clark and his Lotus 49 racer to a victory that saw him finish 23.6 seconds ahead of the competition, despite starting in eighth.

The engine in question was the Cosworth DFV engine, which was an abbreviation for Double Four Valve. The naturally aspirated, three-liter V8 motor produced more than 400 hp in its first season and was quickly adopted by most teams on the grid.

When the Cosworth DFV was first unveiled in 1967, it powered just the Lotus cars on the grid. But, after seeing its winning ways teams were soon scrambling to get their hands on DFV engines of their own.

This meant that by the mid 1970s, the Cosworth engine could be found in almost every car competing in Formula 1, except the Ferrari and BRM racers. In fact, in 1969 and 1973, every single F1 race was won by a car powered by a Cosworth DFV engine.

After asserting its dominance in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Ford and Cosworth were in no hurry to stop their winning ways. As such, Cosworth continued developing the DFV engine to keep it competitive for a whopping 18 years.

Over the years, Cosworth developed four iterations of the engine, including the DFY, which added reconfigured cylinders and increased its output above 520 hp. This was followed by the DFR, which upped the power output once again to more than 600 hp. But, by 1988 when the DFR was introduced, Ferrari, Honda and Renault were all fielding much larger engines, and the aging Cosworth struggled to keep pace.

Still, the Cosworth engine holds the record as the most successful F1 engine of all time, having won 155 races between 1967 and 1985.

Cosworth kept developing F1 engines after the DFV, with the HB engine bringing Michael Schumacher his first win in Formula 1. But Ford had bigger ambitions than just being an engine supplier to future world champions.

So, in 1997 it partnered with the Stewart Racing team, which was founded by three-time Formula One champion Jackie Stewart. The squad served as the Ford works team for its three seasons in F1 between 1997 and 1999. During that time, the team managed just one race win in 1999 with Johnny Herbert at the wheel in the European Grand Prix.

After the highs of its first win in 1999, Ford decided to buy out the Stewart Grand Prix team ahead of the 2000 Formula 1 season. Naturally, it was rebranded as Jaguar Racing to promote the struggling British car company that Ford had also purchased in 1999.

The team fielded well-known drivers like Mark Webber, Eddie Irvine and Pedro de la Rosa during its tenure in the sport. The Jaguar team’s best results were third place finishes at the 2001 Monaco Grand Prix and the 2002 Italian Grand Prix.

Sadly, the Jaguar Racing outfit never quite lived up to Ford’s lofty ambitions. As such, the squad was only run by Ford for five seasons, in which it amassed just 49 world championship points and lost one $250,000 diamond.

It was an expensive marketing exercise that struggled to bring in the returns Ford was expecting, so the team was promptly sold to some energy drink company from Austria. This spawned the launch of the Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team in 2005.

With no team to field of its own, Ford continued supplying engines to outfits including Williams and Minardi. Both teams ran engines developed by Cosworth, which Ford bought outright in 1999.

This continued until the end of the 2006 season, in which Cosworth offered V10 engines to Toro Rosso and a V8 power unit for Williams. After this, Ford stepped away from F1.

Cosworth’s departure from Formula 1 wasn’t long lived, and it was back as an engine supplier in 2010, when Formula 1 brought in new power unit regulations that mandated the use of a V8 motor.

Over four seasons, Cosworth supplied engines to teams including Williams, HRT, Virgin and Lotus, but not when Lotus was actually Renault. Cosworth-powered cars scored just 74 points over four seasons, with best result of fourth for Williams at the 2010 European Grand Prix.

Since 2014, there hasn’t been any connection between Ford and Formula 1 after Cosworth pulled out as an engine supplier with the onset of the turbo hybrid era. But, this is all set to change in 2026 when Ford will partner with Red Bull Racing.

Under the deal, Ford will pay the team that it used to own to stick its name on the engines it now builds. The engines themselves will still be assembled by Red Bull in Milton Keynes in the UK, but Ford will offer insight on the hybrid powertrain and technical knowhow.