Headline: Mekies hints Ricciardo could return to Red Bull orbit in 2026 via Ford link
Daniel Ricciardo has been out of a race suit for a year, but Red Bull’s new boss has teased that the Honey Badger might not be out of the paddock for long.
Laurent Mekies, who took over from Christian Horner as Red Bull Racing’s CEO and team principal in July, has suggested Ricciardo’s fresh role with Ford could put him back in Red Bull colours in 2026—just in a different capacity.
“It’s a family feeling to see Daniel getting back with Ford Racing as part of this adventure,” Mekies told Sky F1. “I’m sure everybody will love to see Daniel back in the paddock and we are perhaps going to have that sometime thanks to Ford Racing.”
Ricciardo, 36, confirmed his retirement from motorsport last week and stepped into a new gig as a Global Ford Racing Ambassador. The timing is hard to ignore: Red Bull Powertrains and Ford begin their engine partnership in 2026, when the team’s in-house units make their debut under the new F1 regulations. From Milton Keynes to Dearborn, the logos will be sharing a lot of space.
Mekies framed it exactly that way—two projects, many “connection points,” and a fan favourite who still moves the needle. And make no mistake, Ricciardo remains one of the biggest modern names, an eight-time grand prix winner who lit up Red Bull’s first era of dominance and later took the famous Monza win for McLaren.
His 2024 tail-end exit from the Racing Bulls setup—dropped for the final six rounds—felt brutal at the time. Since then, he’s kept a low profile. The upcoming Singapore Grand Prix will mark 12 months since his last F1 appearance. But the Ford announcement has changed the conversation from “what happened to Ricciardo?” to “how might he fit into what’s next?”
Don’t read Mekies’ hint as a pathway back into a race seat; that’s not the energy here. This is about brand alignment, paddock presence, and clever overlap. Red Bull’s 2026 launch will be a seismic moment commercially as much as technically, and Ricciardo is box-office for that kind of show: content, fan engagement, demos, perhaps even a simulator cameo when the cameras are rolling. If you’re Red Bull and Ford, why wouldn’t you weaponize the smile?
Ricciardo’s open letter to Ford staff, shared alongside his new role, had the easy charm you’d expect. He name-checked memories that underscore the authenticity of the link—buying a Raptor before he bought a house in the U.S., a giggle-heavy visit with CEO Jim Farley in Dearborn, a trip to Cologne to watch a crash test and field questions. The message was clear: he wants to stay in motorsport without the Sunday-night scar tissue.
“While my racing days are behind me, my love for anything with wheels will always remain high and for that I am proud to be partnering with Ford,” he wrote. He talked up Ford’s Raptor brand—no surprise there—and praised the way the company uses motorsport to feed road-car tech: “From F1, to Dakar and from Le Mans to Bathurst… we have an incredible future ahead.”
That “we” reads differently now that Red Bull and Ford will be tied at the hip from 2026. The corporate marriage gives both sides a chance to deploy Ricciardo wherever the story needs a human hook: U.S. market activations, big-race hospitality, content pieces that bridge Ford Performance and Red Bull Racing. If Mekies is already warming the crowd to the idea of seeing him back in the paddock, it suggests there’s appetite on both ends.
It also fits the mood at Red Bull. With a new structure at the top and a transformative power unit program inbound, the team is reshaping not just how it goes racing, but how it presents itself. Ricciardo—a former team winner, a modern F1 icon, and a marketer’s dream—ticks every box for a 2026 relaunch tour.
Whether that evolves into anything more hands-on is secondary. The headline here is that Ricciardo’s next chapter looks set to loop him back into the Red Bull story at precisely the moment the Ford era begins. It’s neat, it’s strategic, and it might just be fun—exactly how he says he wants it.
