After Selling $121 Million Giants for $1, “Virus” Ford Stays Away From Red Bull’s Top Management

Red Bull’s decision to unveil a similar looking 2023 challenger to last year came as a surprise for many. However, what seemed to be more surprising was the presence of Ford during the entire event. As the event proceeded, Red Bull announced Ford as their partner for the coming years along with their sister team AlphaTauri, and this took everyone aback. And wouldn’t it? Ford was the team Red Bull bought Jaguar from, rebranding it in 2005. With Ford coming back to F1, however, will make sure they stay away from making the blunder they did at the beginning of the 2000s. Johnny Herbert unravels.

Ford bought Stewart Grand Prix from F1 champion Jackie Stewart for £100 million [$121 million]. Soon after this, they rebranded it to Jaguar. As Jaguar began its journey, former F1 driver Herbert shared in a report by Motorsport Magazine, “The team was taken over by Ford and badged as Jaguar – all of Jackie’s way of running things was gone, switched off like a light.”

“While all these management changes were happening, the team was going nowhere. All that corporate mess that was going on sort of just filtered into the factory – it’s like a virus that spreads, and from there everything just gets worse,” told the British former driver who raced both for Stewart and Jaguar. Cut to present times, Ford has reportedly decided to keep off with the “Ford Way” from top management in Red Bull and AlphaTauri, after their earlier lessons.

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After back-to-back underperforming seasons, Ford finally decided to sell the F1 team to the late Dietrich Mateschitz for a symbolic $1. The American motor giants sold the team in return for a commitment of investment of $400 million in the team for the next three seasons. Hence, Red Bull racing was formed.

Christian Horner unravels inside story post Red Bull take over

As Dietrich Mateschitz took over from Ford to form a new team, he subsequently brought in Christian Horner to act as the team principal. Horner, post taking over, found multiple issues that hampered the team from running smoothly.

Talking about this, Horner shared during an interview with The Diary of a CEO, “There was this blame culture within the business where the drawing office blamed the aero, the aero blamed the wind tunnel… the R&D [Research and Development] blaming production, the race team were blamed everybody.”

The Austrian executive went on, “I think it was the blame culture that there was no accountability or collective. No responsibility. So it was then a question of ‘okay how do we unpick that and how do we create the glue to bring this together? For me, what was really needed was the technical direction.”

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As Red Bull started building slowly and steadily and today, it is one of the fiercest teams that exist. With six driver’s championships and five constructors’ titles under their belt, Red Bull is indeed a team to fear for.