How Ford's last F1 adventure turned into a nightmare

F1

Ford's imminent partnership with Red Bull will see it return to the F1 grid in 2026. In our latest issue, Maurice Hamilton unpicks the disaster that unfolded when the brand last made a big commitment to GP racing

Jaguar car reveal with johnny herbert and Eddie Irvine

2000 Jaguar launch was a foreboding indicator of things to come

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The announcement of Ford’s F1 tie-up with Red Bull earlier this year brought an automotive giant back to an arena in which it has enjoyed great success.

From its funding of the DFV, one of grand prix racing’s most successful engines, through to its final F1 win with Jordan at the 2003 Brazilian GP, the Blue Oval has tasted success at motor sport’s highest table across five decades.

However, as Maurice Hamilton explains in this month’s edition, when Ford tried to run its own team with the launch of Jaguar Racing in 2000, the F1 dream soon turned to a nightmare.

 

From the archive

Jackie Stewart had astutely persuaded Ford to invest in his eponymous team which first entered F1 in 1997, before selling control to Detroit in 2000. However, the steady improvement of performance over those three years created slightly naïve perceptions of grand prix racing Stateside.

“The paradox was that Ford’s initial F1 investment in Stewart Grand Prix in 1996 had been as sound as the workmanlike little team which the astute Jackie Stewart then sold to Ford three years later,” writes Hamilton.

“Even more ironic, Stewart’s second place at Monaco and victory at the Nürburgring within 31 months of conception had led the Ford hierarchy to assume this grand prix business had to be easier than shifting motor cars in showrooms around the world.

“It seemed to the top level of Ford Motor Company management in Michigan that Stewart and his son, Paul, had done all the donkey work and the Blue Oval was set to join Ferrari’s Prancing Horse and the Mercedes’ Three-Pointed Star as symbols of competitive global greatness.”

Eddie Irvine blocking his ears from noise

Irvine with Jaguar’s technical director Steve Nichols in pre-season testing, Barcelona, 2002

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This misplaced confidence soon reared its head at the team’s glamorous launch at Lord’s cricket ground prior to the 2000 season.

“Wolfgang Reitzle stepped up to the crease and clearly thought he was hitting a six by speaking with intense enthusiasm about winning races in 2000 and the championship two years later.

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“As recently appointed boss of the F1 effort, the head of Ford’s Premier Automotive Group appeared to believe that Jaguar Racing was simply another high-end marque to join his recently acquired roster of Lincoln, Mercury, Aston Martin and others.

“This great name would supposedly carry on where Jaguar’s competition department had left off in the 1950s.”

The dawn of its debut season at the Australian GP would provide a rude awakening, the new R1 showing perhaps more in common with the Jaguar-branded trams which clunked through Melbourne’s streets than anything resembling a championship winner.

A pair of retirements at the opening event was not the kind of glorious return to racing Ford executives had envisaged for the brand – and it didn’t get much better from there.

Two points finishes for Eddie Irvine and none for Johnny Herbert set the tone for years to come where decent results were hard to come by.

A revolving door of bosses, from Indy 500 winner Bobby Rahal to F1 legend Niki Lauda, in addition to the squandering of design talent such as Gary Anderson, Steve Nichols and Mark Gillan meant the Milton Keynes team represented more of a viper’s nest than a coherent team.

Eventually, after rejecting initial approaches from Red Bull, first in relation to sponsorship and later ownership, Jaguar sold up to Dietrich Mateschitz for a nominal amount at the end of 2004 – setting it on a path to become one of the most successful teams in F1 history.

Webber with Jaguar racing

Ford put the brakes on at the end of 2004

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“Six years later Red Bull Racing, operating out of the same premises in Milton Keynes, would win the first of four successive drivers’ and constructors’ championships. Adrian Newey had joined in 2006.

“Significantly, the same team principal, chief technical director, chief engineering officer and sporting director remain in place today.”

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