Rashbrook: It's unlikely that Red Bull and Ford will achieve success immediately, but...

      Mark Rushbrook, director of Ford Performance Motorsport, is currently at the Dakar rally-raid and is following the performances of the American corporation’s factory team drivers. But in an interview with the Spanish newspaper Marca another topic was raised — the collaboration with the Red Bull Racing team in Formula 1.

      Mark Rushbrook: "We are very pleased with how our Ford Racing team is performing and with how the Raptor off‑roaders are doing. Knock on wood, but so far everything is fine in terms of both reliability and speed. You could say that luck is on our side too.

      We are not leading, but that's okay. There's still a long way to go before the end of the rally-raid, and we are in decent positions. Participation in the Dakar clearly helps grow our business; we want to benefit from that, so we are expanding the range of road-going Ford Raptor models. Thanks to these competitions we must prove that our off‑roaders remain the best on the market. Our rally-raid program is planned for three years, but I foresee that we will continue to compete in the Dakar long after 2027."

      There are only a few days left until the joint presentation that Ford will hold with Red Bull on January 15 in Detroit, and when Rushbrook was asked about the upcoming event he said:

      "It has been almost three years since we announced the partnership with Red Bull. Creating a new power unit together is a fantastically interesting project. But time passes very quickly, and here we are already preparing for the presentation, after which tests in Barcelona will begin on January 26. We believe that, thanks to everything being done at the Milton Keynes base, we are in a good position, although nothing can be taken for granted until work on the track begins.

      Ford's role in this project was that we mainly worked on the electrical side of the power unit. But our specialists also contributed to the development of control systems and took part in the tuning process when it was necessary to integrate the internal combustion engine with the hybrid systems.

      Max Verstappen is an amazing driver and a wonderful person. Whether he remains at Red Bull Racing after 2026 will primarily depend on results on the track. We all strive for victories, and at Ford they want Max to have at his disposal everything he needs — the best car and the best engine.

      We know we have taken on a very difficult task by accepting this challenge, especially considering that Red Bull is creating power units for the first time. It's hard to imagine that we'll succeed straight away, but it's not impossible that things will turn out exactly that way."