Ford-Cadillac, sparks are already flying: “With Red Bull only marketing”; “You have a Ferrari engine”

The F1 of new rivalries The revolution of 2026 brings new teams, new engine engineers, names that had never set foot in the paddock (Audi, Cadillac) to Formula 1 and others that instead return as protagonists, such as Ford. For the American giant, which has just presented the liveries of Red Bull and Racing Bulls in its Detroit to celebrate the work on the power unit together with the Milton Keynes team, it is already a stars and stripes “derby” with Cadillac, which has “allied” with General Motors, supplier of the power units starting from 2029. In Michigan, the statements made a few months ago by Cadillac CEO Dan Towriss, who underlined that the agreement with Red Bull was in progress huge marketing role while Mario Andretti’s team went on track with his name and a much greater commitment. Towriss’ words: “Ford’s involvement is a marketing deal and has minimal impact, while General Motors is a shareholder. They are deeply rooted from an engineering perspective and have been involved since day one. These two deals couldn’t be more different,” Towriss teased. Ford’s response In the last few hours, Ford’s response arrived: CEO Jim Farley denigrated Towriss’ words (“They have no value, they’re funny”, this is his comment on The Drive), while executive president Bill Ford returned the criticism to the sender. “These are patently absurd comments, they stunned me. In fact, the opposite is true: they use a Ferrari engine, not a Cadillac one. I don’t know if they have General Motors employees on their race team. If there’s anything that looks like a marketing initiative, this is it.” His son Will – general manager of Ford Performance – added: “We could have spent a lot of money to put our logo on the car or to put our name alongside that of a team. Instead we have a real technical collaboration in Red Bull Ford Powertrains.”