APRIL 12, 1999
Ford becomes popular
THE FORD MOTOR COMPANY has suddenly become one of the most popular engine companies in Grand Prix racing, following the promising showing of the Stewart-Ford combination in Australia and Brazil.
Last year Ford was quietly trying to buy Stewart Grand Prix to turn the team into a factory team. Jackie Stewart has, however, stuck to his guns and says that he has no plans to sell. Ford appears to have accepted this when it agreed an extension to the Stewart-Ford deal.
Our sources within Ford, however, insist that if the engine continues to be successful it will be rebadged as a Jaguar V10 next year as part of Ford's marketing campaign to take Jaguar head to head with BMW.
Ford sources say that they want to focus on the main effort in F1 but we hear that the possibility of earning money from supplying customer or semi-works engines may be too tempting for Ford to reject and that we may see both Jaguar and Ford engines running in F1. This will enable Ford to reduce its F1 costs as such an arrangement could raise as much as $30-35m a year if the engines are supplied to two teams.