Helmut Marko: A Red Bull–Ford win in 2026 would be “unbelievable” — and that’s exactly the point
Red Bull is about to step into Formula 1’s most unforgiving arena: the engine room. After years of winning titles by outfoxing factories on the chassis side, the Milton Keynes team will bolt a power unit of its own design into its 2026 car — developed in tandem with Ford — and let it sing on Sunday. Even for a serial winner, that’s a different level of jeopardy.
Helmut Marko, no longer on Red Bull’s payroll but still very much Red Bull in spirit, isn’t sugarcoating the scale of the challenge. Speaking on the Beyond the Grid podcast shortly before his exit, the long-time senior advisor admitted that expectations have to meet reality when the rules reset hits next year.
“It’s the first time we are doing an engine,” he said. “It was a big investment, much more than we thought in the beginning… Of course, we are newcomers, but if our engine would be a front-runner, it’s already a big success. But if we could win with our engine in the first year, that would be unbelievable.”
It’s classic Marko — blunt, ambitious, and quietly daring you to bet against them.
This all started when Honda signalled its withdrawal and Red Bull elected to take control of its future, building out a power unit programme rather than rolling the dice on another supplier. The U-turn from Honda came later, but by then the die was cast. Red Bull Powertrains rose on the Milton Keynes campus, Ford signed on as a partner, and the target moved from “let’s survive” to “let’s compete.”
The timing is either perfect or diabolical, depending on how you view risk. In 2026, both chassis and engine regulations change substantially. Everyone will be navigating fresh ground, which levels the playing field on paper and turns pecking orders into guesswork. The flip side: the established engine houses — think Mercedes and Ferrari — have weathered rule changes before. Audi joins the grid as a works outfit, too, taking over Sauber with its own unit. No one’s standing still.
So why does Red Bull think it can elbow into a club that’s spent decades learning how to make horsepower the hard way? Marko’s answer was equal parts culture and conviction.
“I would say it’s part that we are a bit crazy,” he said with a smile you could hear. “And the other thing [is] that if we decide to do something, we do it proper, and we put all the effort, all the passion behind it. Motor racing is a team sport, so you need this passion through the whole team to get successful.”
Strip away the bravado and you’ll find a very pragmatic goal for year one: build an engine that’s competitive and integrates cleanly with a car that, aerodynamically, should be no slouch. Red Bull’s aero group doesn’t need an introduction; the real test is whether the new power unit delivers performance and driveability without compromising the car’s DNA. If it does, they’ve cleared the highest bar in modern F1: being fast everywhere, not just on spreadsheets.
There’s also the small matter of reliability. New programmes tend to learn the hard way — on a flatbed truck. Red Bull would rather not. A season spent in the hunt, nicking poles or podiums on merit, would validate the project. A win? Marko’s “unbelievable” becomes the headline of the year.
It’s easy to forget how much this flips Red Bull’s traditional script. Their dominance came from pairing peerless aerodynamics with customer engines — first Renault, then Honda — and extracting synergy better than anyone. Now, the group that perfected integration must originate it. That’s not a tweak; that’s a philosophical pivot.
The intrigue for 2026 isn’t just whether Red Bull can win straight out of the box. It’s what their ceiling looks like once the learning curve flattens. If they’re genuinely in the fight from the start, the message to their rivals is brutal: even when the rules change, the target doesn’t.
Marko knows all that. He also knows that debut seasons have a way of exposing bravado. Which is why calling a first-year victory “unbelievable” feels less like hedging and more like scene-setting. Red Bull hasn’t built this project to celebrate P6s. They’ve built it to make the impossible look inevitable.
Now comes the fun part: turning theory into lap time. The next time we hear that new Ford-badged power unit at full noise, we’ll learn whether Red Bull’s leap of faith lands on the top step or a little short. Either way, the sport’s about to find out how far “a bit crazy” can really take you.
