Classic US rivalry hits F1 as Ford slams Cadillac's "patently absurd" claims

US manufacturers Ford and Cadillac are poised to bring their long-running rivalry to Formula 1, as Ford has responded to what it felt are "patently absurd" claims from the Cadillac camp over the nature of its Red Bull involvement.

Having last competed in F1 under the Jaguar brand in 2004, Ford is joining forces with Red Bull for the new power unit era of 2026, contributing personnel and technology to the Milton Keynes squad as it debuts its first-ever in-house power units.

Ford's original intention was to assist Red Bull Powertrains with the electrification aspect of the new power units, which will move towards a near 50-50 split between internal combustion power and electric energy, by leveraging the Dearborn, Michigan, based OEM's battery technology. However, throughout the process the Blue Oval's contribution has grown to include pitching in with elements of the V6 combustion engine and manufacturing parts in the US.

Meanwhile, Cadillac is coming on board as an 11th expansion team, starting from scratch with bases at Silverstone in the UK and several sites in the US, including an under-construction headquarters in Fishers, Indiana. Cadillac will initially run Ferrari customer engines while working on its own power units for 2029.

The two marques entertain a long-running rivalry both on and off the track, most notably competing for decades in NASCAR racing. Before the start of winter testing, the two camps have already started trading barbs as they are set to fight out their feud on F1's battlefield.

Speaking to reporters at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac F1 CEO Dan Towriss downplayed Ford's actual involvement, labelling it as "a marketing deal with very minimal impact, while GM is an equity owner. They’re deeply embedded from an engineering standpoint, and they were involved from day one. Those two deals couldn’t be more different.”

Cadillac's F1 effort is led by CEO Dan Towriss and team principal Graeme Lowdon

Photo by: Kym Illman / Getty Images

Speaking to The Athletic, Ford executive chairman Bill Ford laughed off Towriss' comments, calling them, "patently absurd" and saying he "was stunned" when he first heard them.

“I would say, actually, the reverse is true,” Ford said. “They’re running a Ferrari engine. They’re not running a Cadillac engine. I don’t know if they have any GM employees on the race team. If anything looks like a marketing effort, that does.”

Bill Ford's son Will, who is the general manager of Ford Performance, similarly dismissed Cadillac's comparison. “Nothing could be further from the truth, in terms of our partnership with Red Bull being a marketing effort," he told The Athletic.

“We could have spent a lot of money to slap our logo on a car, or to put our name alongside a team. But we made a very deliberate decision to form Red Bull Ford Powertrains as a true technical partnership, and really complement the audacious effort that Red Bull decided to set down on in developing their own power unit."

Ford is set to unveil its 2026 partnership with Red Bull Racing and sister team Racing Bulls at a season launch in Detroit on Thursday night, while Cadillac will unveil its 2026 livery during a Superbowl half-time ad on 8 February. The Graeme Lowdon-led squad, which is partly owned by parent company General Motors, recently revealed its stealthy one-off livery for F1's Barcelona shakedown at the end of this month.