On Thursday, January 15, at the recently (and beautifully) restored Michigan Central Station in Detroit, Ford will reveal its entire lineup of race vehicles for the 2026 season. It will be joined by its F1 powertrain partners, Red Bull and Racing Bulls, who will be unveiling their entries for the 2026 F1 season. There’s more, too: An “all-new Ford Racing production road car” is in the works, and attendees will get a sneak peek.
Known until recently as Ford Motorsports, Ford Racing will go first, showing off the diverse portfolio of race vehicles that will compete on- and off-road. Expect to see Ford’s 2026 NASCAR stocker; the GT3-spec Mustangs that will compete in endurance road racing at home, in IMSA’s Weathertech SportsCar Championship, and abroad, in Europe and Asia, and Australia; plus high-tech off-road trucks built for Dakar and Baja. It will be a packed event: Ford is inviting dealers, along with drivers and team owners. We’ll be there, too, trying not to drool on any of the cars.
Later that evening, we’ll hear from Red Bull and its sibling team Racing Bulls. For the past two years, Red Bull has partnered with Ford on the development of a next-gen hybrid power unit that will power the Oracle Red Bull Racing team and the Visa Cash App Racing Bulls team for 2026. When Ford says that it is back in F1, therefore, the arrangement is slightly different than its NASCAR or IMSA programs, where Ford is involved in building the race cars and backs the teams that run them.
“Ford is very much at the heart of this project,” writes the global director of Ford Racing, Mark Rushbrook, in a letter shared with media earlier this week. “With Formula 1’s incredible global growth, a new and diverse fanbase, and the 2026 regulations’ focus on sustainable fuels and electric power, the technical challenge has never been greater—or more aligned with our vision for the future of automotive performance.” Look (and listen) for the new power unit during the first F1 pre-season test, in Barcelona, January 26–30.
Now, for that production car. Ford clearly wants to play on the global stage, which means that whatever this car is, it needs to make sense to buyers in a broad array of markets, including Europe, which has zones of very strict emissions regulations in its urban centers. (How is anyone to know you own a supercar if you don’t park it in front of a Hermés or Gucci store?) Those zero-emissions zones practically ensure that the new car will be a hybrid. That ties in perfectly with Ford’s hybrid F1 powertrain project, too. We’re most curious whether Ford will call this car a Mustang. Could we get a hybrid version of the Mustang GTD, perhaps with a more luxurious interior, designed for sweeping through the Riviera and shopping in the Golden Triangle? Or will Ford bring back the GT name?
Ford will be dropping more teasers between now and January 15. We’ll be there, bundled up, to bring you all the details.
