The Blue Oval is plotting its Formula 1 return with Red Bull. But as Maurice Hamilton explains, Ford’s last effort in green offers a red-light warning of how it can all go wrong

AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, GRAND PRIX PHOTO

Ford and Red Bull in alliance for 2026? These two have previous, and it didn’t end well. OK, the colours, brand names and personalities were different when Jaguar Racing was launched at the turn of the millennium. But as it prepares to dive back into the Formula 1 cauldron Ford will be all too aware that the waking nightmare from last time cannot – and must not – be repeated.

Just two podiums to show after five indifferent seasons meant Jaguar gained nothing but notoriety from its only chapter in grand prix racing, by becoming one of the most high-profile failures in F1. The British-based team would also have been listed as the most profligate (a distinction falling to Toyota) were it not for parent company Ford reducing a healthy budget that had been squandered early on. This failure to understand F1’s unique needs was one of two major handicaps blighting the much-vaunted programme, the other being a revolving door of management that made Jaguar Racing look like an employment bureau rather than a slick F1 team.

The paradox was that Ford’s initial F1 investment in Stewart Grand Prix in 1996 had been as sound as the workmanlike little team which the astute Jackie Stewart then sold to Ford three years later. Even more ironic, Stewart’s second place at Monaco and victory at the Nürburgring within 31 months of conception had led the Ford hierarchy to assume this grand prix business had to be easier than shifting motor cars in showrooms around the world. It seemed to the top level of Ford Motor Company management in Michigan that Stewart and his son, Paul, had done all the donkey work and the Blue Oval was set to join Ferrari’s Prancing Horse and the Mercedes Three-Pointed Star as symbols of competitive global greatness.

The fundamental failing of such a bold belief was painfully apparent at the scene of Jaguar Racing’s official launch in London on the evening of Tuesday, January 25, 2000. Ford chose Lord’s, the so-called Home of Cricket, to mark the return of a famous motor racing name. But the accompanying speeches would have the same effect on Jaguar’s projected overambition as the entire team being bowled leg before wicket with successive balls.