What’s the guaranteed follow-up to an automaker making a big fuss about entering a global motorsport series? Talk how about race technology is going to carom off the track and into the street cars in the parking lot. When done properly, the talk can be demonstrated with a street car that maximizes the transfer possibilities such as the Audi R8, Porsche 911 GT3 or the new Chevrolet Corvette Z06. It can also happen in a more general, widespread way that’s equally beneficial, like when Volvo entered the World Touring Car Championship in 2016 and Polestar began to really bloom. Now we get Ford returning to Formula 1 in 2026 with Red Bull as Red Bull Ford. As part of the announcement, Motor Authority picked up on the Dearborn manufacturer showing an infographic about how its global motorsports programs exchange expertise from road to race and back. In the lower right of the image at top, the slide shows something wicked, new and electric this way comes.
We’re not sure precisely what the vehicle will be, but it will join the cadre of EV performance demonstrators Ford’s been showing for the past two years. The pickup silhouette leads to the obvious guess that we’re looking for an imperious F-150 Lightning. The other EV demonstrators are the seven-motor, 1,400-horsepower Mach-E 1400 Prototype, the Mustang Cobra Jet 1400 dragstrip special, the 1978 F-100 Eluminator pickup with two crate e-motors, and the 1,973-hp quad-motor SuperVan 4 that gets from zero to 62 miles per hour in less than two seconds.
The silhouettes in the other slides are the Mustang GT3 in the upper left, the Ranger Raptor in the upper right, and the Red Bull Ford we imagine will be the RB22 assuming Red Bull’s naming convention holds through 2026.
The biggest issue we have with the EV demonstrators we’ve seen so far is that no one can buy them. The standard Lightning with 563 hp and 775 lb-ft is certainly quick in its own right, though it does contend with the weight of many batteries. Still, if there were ever a time for the return of a retail Lightning with electric performance as comparatively audacious as the original, now is it.
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