America’s longest-running automotive rivalry has finally arrived on Formula 1’s biggest commercial stage.
For more than a century, General Motors and Ford have fought for supremacy in the US car market – through showrooms, racetracks, technology labs and boardrooms. Now, for the first time, that battle is being waged on the most globally influential platform in motorsport.
On the surface, 2026 looks set to mark the start of America’s new era on the grid. The Cadillac F1 Team joins as the sport’s 11th outfit, backed by GM as an equity owner and future works engine manufacturer.
Ford, meanwhile, returns through a high-profile technical partnership with Oracle Red Bull Racing and Visa Cash App Racing Bulls, co-developing its next-generation power unit for F1’s sweeping regulation reset.
But beneath the launches, liveries and marketing campaigns, something far more significant is taking shape.
This is not simply two American brands entering F1. It is the world’s two largest US car manufacturers using the sport as a platform.
A rivalry older than F1 itself
Ford and GM have spent decades racing one another across NASCAR, Le Mans, Daytona, Bathurst and sports car racing. But F1 has always remained the missing arena. That changes in 2026.
And it changes at a moment when F1 is more American-facing than ever before, with races in Miami, Austin and Las Vegas, surging audiences, and Apple taking over domestic broadcast rights.
“There definitely is a national pride element to Cadillac,” the team’s Chief Executive Officer, Dan Towriss, said last year.
“F1 is innovation on the biggest stage imaginable, and the US didn’t really have a seat at that table.”
Now it has two.
A corporate feud – not a paddock spat
The first flashpoint came before car launches and ahead of pre-season testing, as Towriss dismissed Ford’s Red Bull partnership as little more than a branding exercise.
“It’s not even close,” Towriss said.
“One is a marketing deal with very minimal impact, while GM is an equity owner. They’re deeply embedded from an engineering standpoint, and they were involved from day one. Those two deals couldn’t be more different.”
The remarks landed directly on the desk of Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Company – and his response made clear this was about far more than F1 optics.
Ford told The Athletic he was “stunned” by the comments, before turning the accusation back on Cadillac.
“If anything looks like a marketing effort, that does,” he said.
“They’re running a Ferrari engine. They’re not running a Cadillac engine. I don’t know if they have any GM employees on the race team.”
Ford went further, calling Towriss’ assessment “patently absurd”, while Ford Performance general manager Will Ford added: “Nothing could be further from the truth, in terms of our partnership with Red Bull being a marketing effort.”
“They’re running a Ferrari engine. They’re not running a Cadillac engine. I don’t know if they have any GM employees on the race team.”
Bill Ford
Two giants, two strategies
What makes the clash so compelling is that GM and Ford are not just arriving in F1 – they are doing so with fundamentally different philosophies about how to use the sport.
Ford has embedded itself inside Red Bull Powertrains, working alongside the team on the development of the 2026 power unit. Its engineers are based full-time in Milton Keynes, with additional technical support flowing from Dearborn, Michigan.
The programme spans battery systems, energy deployment, engine calibration, advanced software tools and 3D-printed components, with parts being shipped across the Atlantic almost daily.
Red Bull Ford Powertrains is, by design, a deep technical partnership.
“We could have spent a lot of money to slap our logo on a car,” Will Ford said.
“But we made a very deliberate decision to form Red Bull Ford Powertrains as a true technical partnership…with the intention of creating the best power unit in F1, just like we did in decades past.”
Ford’s play is clear, align itself with the most dominant team of the modern era, embed its engineers at the heart of F1’s next technical revolution, and use the sport as proof of its performance and electrification credentials.
Cadillac’s approach is equally ambitious – but structurally very different.
Backed by GM, Cadillac enters F1 as a team owner from day one, building an operation from scratch after receiving final approval in March 2025.
Its race base is in Silverstone, with a new US headquarters opening this year in Fishers, Indiana, alongside technical hubs in Charlotte and Warren, Michigan.
For its first three seasons, Cadillac will run Ferrari power before introducing its own in-house GM engine from 2029, at which point it becomes a full works team.
GM’s vision is to own the platform, own the technology, and use F1 as a long-term global showcase for Cadillac as a luxury-tech performance brand.
In Towriss’ view, that makes the comparison with Ford invalid. Suffice to say, Ford strongly disagrees.
The US fight
The TGR Haas F1 Team may still carry the Stars and Stripes on the entry list, but the arrival of Cadillac and Ford-backed Red Bull transforms Formula 1’s American presence into something far more consequential.
What looks like a motorsport story is, in reality, a corporate power struggle – and as Bill Ford’s comments show, neither side is waiting for testing or Melbourne to begin. America’s biggest automotive rivalry has already gone green.
