Ford aiming for F1 return – but goalposts are moving

Mark Hughes

Ford's rumoured F1 return would see a historic GP brand look to repeat huge sporting success – but the entry requirements are changing in a market of high fluctuation

Rubens Barrichello Stewart F1 Brazilian GP 1999

Most recent Ford F1 effort was with Stewart and then Jaguar

Getty Images

display_e35f2226d3

If the rumour mill is to be believed we will soon be seeing the return of the Ford brand to Formula 1, almost certainly just as a naming partner to an existing team or power unit in exchange for a sponsorship sum which would be dwarfed by the funding for the creation of an actual engine from scratch. If so, it will be a case of history repeating as the most successful F1 engine of all time, the Cosworth DFV, carried the Ford oval on its cam covers as it won grands prix between 1967 and 1983, for a relatively paltry initial investment. The Cosworth-Ford partnership repeated with the title-winning Benetton-Ford of 1994 and the 1999 race-winning Stewart-Ford, via the detour of the unsuccessful Beatrice Haas-Ford of 1986.

“A one-off payment would potentially still leave other teams worse off for years”

Ford’s historic marketplace rival General Motors has never previously shown much interest in F1, but is now putting its most prestigious brand Cadillac behind the Andretti Global team’s attempt to enter the category. Quite what form this would take is not totally clear because initially at any rate, the plan for Andretti would be to use power units sourced from Renault. The inference is that Cadillac would be just another naming deal based on sponsorship – rather like the Alfa-Romeo branding currently carried by Sauber – but who knows?

Certainly not the other teams, who are not privy to such fine detail as the team makes its bid through the FIA and Liberty’s Formula One Management. Bringing in an automotive manufacturer to the sport has been given a lot of weight, the inference being only that would be enough to justify adding an 11th team and thereby diluting the profit share of the existing 10. What the existing teams are wary of is an uncompetitive entity gaining access to the club and its profits without either investing heavily enough or bringing a heavyweight automotive representation. Hence its suspicion of just how deep the Cadillac connection would be.

Related article

Ford Cosworth DFV: the greatest racing engine ever made
Great Read Great Read
Racing tech

Ford Cosworth DFV: the greatest racing engine ever made

135 years of innovation: making of the internal combustion engine, Part 6 Just as the Coventry Climax racing effort was fading in the mid-1960s, a new contender was waiting in…

By display_bcb90e58ea

Since Andretti first put its bid together the goalposts have been moved, and only partly from the other teams’ resistance. It’s also from the commercial expansion and profits of the sport in the last two years, something which can be gauged by where the anti-dilution fund was set – $200 million – when the current Concorde Agreement was drafted in 2020. This is how much any new team granted entry would currently have to lodge to compensate the others for their 10% reduction in the slice of F1’s pie. But it’s a one-off payment and potentially would still leave those other teams worse off after two or three years, depending of course upon how commercially successful F1 was during that time.

That $200 million was set there because that was approximately the value of an independent F1 team at that time. In that way the fund would be a deterrent to a team gaining an entry and flipping it for a quick profit. Not long after, Williams was sold for a reported $180million, apparently confirming that approximate valuation. But the financial sands were shifting, something Andretti found after almost buying a controlling interest in Sauber in 2021 but then having the terms changed upwards, triggering Andretti into pulling out, saying Sauber’s self-valuation was ridiculously high.

Subsequently of course Audi announced its purchase of Sauber for a reported fee of $600million. If that’s the new value of a team in this F1 boom, suddenly that $200million anti-dilution fund doesn’t adequately fulfil that role any more.

House buyers in the UK will be very familiar with the dilemma of when to buy in an uncertain market. Do you pay slightly over the odds in an overheated market in the expectation that the value is going to rise considerably more than that? If you are reluctant to pay that premium to secure the house as you feel it’s over-valued are you risking on losing out? Or are you going to be glad you didn’t commit a year or so from now as the market readjusts downwards?

The value of investments can go down as well as up.