Ford sent stern warning ahead of Red Bull tie-up

Former F1 team boss Otmar Szafnauer has delivered a warning to Ford as it prepares to link up with Red Bull next year.

Ford will partner with the Red Bull Powertrains division as new power unit regulations come into play alongside fresh changes to the chassis.

The American automotive giant is one of several new additions to the grid next year, with Honda and Audi joining as power unit manufacturers.

Red Bull is set to benefit from Ford's knowledge of battery systems, with electrical output receiving a significant boost in 2026.

Before working for teams such as Alpine and Aston Martin, Szafnauer was once part of the Ford company before the turn of the millennium.

Ford has been absent from F1 for some time, but Szanfauer is confident it still has plenty to offer Red Bull next year.

“Ford is a massive and very capable company, and they’ve been racing for a long time, including in F1,” Szafnauer told PlanetF1.com.

“They owned their own team, they were engine suppliers and they owned Cosworth for a while.

“So their racing roots go really, really deep, and they still race in North America now.

“Red Bull is getting a very competent and capable partner.”

Red Bull/Ford cannot afford a 'mix'

However, Szafnauer warned it must be wary of not applying all its existing knowledge to the project as it may not translate to F1 success.

“Now, the one thing that I learned when I left Ford to go to British American Racing [in 1998], is I quickly learned the things that worked at Ford that would also work in F1 I needed to apply,” he said.

“But there are other things that would work well at Ford that wouldn’t work well in F1, just the opposite, it would slow them down.

“Those things – you don’t apply and you have to have the experience of both sides to say ‘Yes, that would be helpful’, and, ‘No, that won’t’.

“If you mix those two, you can get yourself in trouble. If you don’t mix them, then great.”