Red Bull-Ford’s first F1 power unit hits crunch time: Mekies says it’s “peak stress” now
There’s a new sound rolling out of Milton Keynes, and it’s not the usual symphony of aero rigs and brakes on dynos. Red Bull’s first in-house Formula 1 power unit, built in collaboration with Ford, is running on the test bench—and the people behind it are in what Laurent Mekies calls the “peak stress moment” to make sure it leaves the factory and actually sees a racetrack in 2026.
This is the final, audacious step in Red Bull’s long march to becoming a true works team on both sides of the garage. After two decades of relying on partners—lately Honda under a factory deal that ends at the close of 2025—Red Bull Powertrains is now responsible for its own heartbeat. Ford’s back in F1 too, not with a badge-and-sponsorship special, but bolted to the core of the project.
Symbolically, Mekies doesn’t shy away from the scale of it. Speaking on Red Bull’s own Talking Bull podcast, he framed the move as classic Red Bull: borderline mad, and totally on brand. In his words, there’s “no crazier challenge” than deciding to build your own engine—and the fact it’s alive on the dyno already gives the place a certain electricity. The sound is on. Now comes the hard part.
Timing is tight. Internal testing has been running for a while, and the target remains to have a power unit ready to install for early-year running, with the end of January earmarked as a key milestone. The test cells at Milton Keynes are fully up and humming; what follows is the unforgiving sprint from bench to car. It’s the phase where neat numbers on screens must translate into cold starts, hot laps and—most importantly—repeatable reliability.
And it won’t just be for one team. The plan is to power both Red Bull and its sister squad, Racing Bulls, in 2026. That means twice the packaging work, twice the integration challenges, and a whole lot of system-level debugging as the new power unit meets a new generation of chassis under fresh technical regulations.
Red Bull-Ford is one of two fresh manufacturers entering the sport in 2026, with Audi also bringing its own unit as the rules reset. The rest of the engine map shifts too: Alpine moves to customer Mercedes power for the new era, while Red Bull’s former partner Honda switches to Aston Martin in a full factory tie-up. Cadillac arrives on the constructor side and will run Ferrari power at first before introducing its own unit in 2028. The competitive landscape is about to get busy.
For Red Bull, the stakes are obvious. You don’t just “decide” to be an engine company and then cruise through it. The control electronics, energy recovery strategies, combustion efficiency, thermal management—these are deep, specialised domains. Even with Ford’s support and a resource-loaded campus, the early laps will be a test of process as much as performance. If you’ve listened closely to how this team works, though, you know they thrive in exactly this kind of pressure cooker.
Mekies’ tone carried that mix of pride and pragmatism. Hearing the PU sing on the dyno? Great moment. But he was clear that Red Bull Powertrains is in the most intense stretch now—where you stop talking about “the engine” and start delivering an engine. One that fires first time in the car. One that runs all day. One that scales from simulation to software to circuit without throwing nasty surprises.
It’s a big swing. It also might be the most Red Bull thing the world champions have ever done. And if they pull it off, the team that spent years defining the modern F1 chassis could end up defining the full package.
Photo credit: Red Bull Content Pool
