There’s been a lot of rumours over the past few months that Red Bull was working on a partnership with Ford, and now it seems like this is going to be announced less than a week from now at the RB 19 Launch, which you can watch live with us thanks to Red Bull Racing. This would be a big statement of intent from the Milton Keynes based team who have looked at a way to ensure they are sustainable going forward since the passing of Dietrich Mateschitz. While the Ford deal likely won’t involve any technical help, it will instead offer a massive flow of income, from outside the Red Bull company.
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Badging Deal
The interesting part of this entire deal is that it seems to work out perfectly for both teams. Ford, who ironically sold the team to Red Bull in the first place, will get to have their name in F1 and gain all of the marketing effort, without spending hundreds of millions on technical development. This means that instead they will just pay a fixed fee to have their badges on the car, and perhaps a full title sponsorship. This is similar to how Aston Martin worked with Red Bull in recent years except it will also badge the engine.
NYC Event Rumours
It was an interesting choice from the start that both Red Bull teams, Red Bull Racing (which is based in the UK) and AlphaTauri (which is based in Italy), both decided that they would launch their cars in NYC. Clearly there is a reason for this as both teams are looking at facing the American market. This would line up with the fact that the engines in both teams cars will run under a Ford badge, therefore allowing for Ford to send it’s people to the events on home soil. This would line up with the whispers that Ford and Red Bull will jointly announce the RB19 on February 3rd.
Another interesting, although cryptic, piece of this puzzle is the fact that Red Bull themselves posted an interesting tweet about the livery launch. Which showed the car as a blank canvas, with the Red Bull logo in black and the rest of the car in white. Given that Red Bull have kept a fairly consistent livery over the past few years, this would hint at a bigger shakeup to the cars style.
2023 👉 A blank canvas 🎨 pic.twitter.com/u8miBUSCwu
— Oracle Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) January 27, 2023
Bad for Andretti
One person that probably won’t be happy about this news, is Michael Andretti. Andretti and his outfit have been pushing heavily towards an F1 entry. The big show piece that they surprised us and the world with, was the fact that they managed to bring Cadillac (and therefore GM) on board. Not only is the Ford news a main competitor for GM on the grid, it also means that now they’ve lost their “Big US Manufacturer” card.
