As Motorsport.com reports, the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia brought a historic victory for Max Verstappen at Sepang, alongside a milestone that feels almost absurd to witness. It has been a very long time since a Ford engine last won an F1 race—all the way back in April 2003, when Giancarlo Fisichella took victory at the Brazilian GP in a Jordan powered by a Ford-Cosworth RS1 V10. That 2003 race ended prematurely after a crash involving Fernando Alonso, who was then in just his second full F1 season, before a dramatic timing mix-up briefly handed the win to Kimi Raikkonen before Eddie Jordan successfully protested.
Today's setup requires some nuance, of course. Whether Sepang really counts as a victory for a Ford engine is open to debate. The internal combustion engine was built entirely by Red Bull Powertrains, with Ford providing support in power-unit expertise and battery technology—leading cynics to call it a Red Bull engine with a Ford sticker on it. As Helmut Marko explained back in March 2023, the engine comes solely from Red Bull Powertrains while Ford focuses on battery technology.
Red Bull's path to building its own power unit began out of pure necessity. After winning world championships with Renault, the French manufacturer scaled back, leaving Red Bull running rebadged TAG Heuer engines that nobody particularly liked. Then came Honda, supplying power until their withdrawal announcement in October 2020 amid the pandemic. Staring at a future without an engine supplier, and tired of traditional car manufacturers looking down on an energy-drink company, Dietrich Mateschitz and his team decided to take matters into their own hands. Building the best engine right in the heartland of Mercedes and traditional automotive giants sounded like madness to the paddock, but challenging the impossible was in Red Bull's DNA.
Things nearly went a different way during talks with Porsche. In July 2021, Marko spoke with Fritz Enzinger, leading to advanced discussions for a joint venture that reached a relaxed high point with Zirbenschnaps at Hangar-7 in November 2021. But Christian Horner began to wonder why Red Bull needed Porsche at all. By February 2022, after delegations met in Fuschl and Weissach, the prospect of submitting proposals to a major corporate board rather than just Mateschitz and Marko killed the deal. Horner had already pushed ahead with founding Red Bull Powertrains and constructing the technology campus in Milton Keynes, recruiting engineers from rival manufacturers.
Now, four years later, that gamble has paid off completely. Red Bull has beaten Mercedes and Ferrari with its own engine, boasting what the FIA's ADUO classification objectively confirms as the most powerful internal combustion engine in F1. Though Horner is no longer the team principal and won't have his name in the official results or claim the trophy from Sepang, Milton Keynes was his territory and the Powertrains division grew under his leadership. As he prepares to release his autobiography, Drive, on 22 October, no one can edit out the fact that Red Bull built its own F1 engine and won with it in its very first season.
