Bloomberg TV’s Matt Miller is live from the Detroit Central Station with Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley and Oracle Red Bull Racing Team CEO Laurent Mekies. They talk about the latest in carmaker trends, racing and changes across the industry
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Questions asked in this interview
3
1:27Why do you, when you're talking to Bill Ford, when you're talking to the shareholders, how do you justify this spend and this drive to go racing?
5:51What can you bring back that puts value into those price increases?
9:31Have you made any progress in getting maybe carveouts?
I want to welcome our Bloomberg television and Bloomberg radio audiences to Michigan Central Station here in Detroit. I'm sitting down with Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, as well as Laura Meckis, who runs the Red Bull Racing Team. It's a pleasure, gentlemen. I'm very excited as a fan of the brand and the league. And let me start, Laurent, with you because you've said that this is the steepest hill F1 has ever had to climb. New regulations this year are sweeping. It's not just a tweak here and there. And you're starting with a brand new partner with Ford who is going to build the engine with you as a collaboration. Why choose Ford as a partner?
You're right. It's the biggest regulation change probably in the history of Formula 1, at least in the modern history of Formula 1. And it's also on that very same year that we chose the crazy challenge to go and build our own power unit. And if you do that, you want to partner with the best. We are in a lucky position where we have managed to strike this strategic technical partnership with Ford in this crazy adventure of building from absolutely zero our own power unit, and we go together in this new regulations.
Jim, for you this must be exciting because you've built a new legacy for Ford in terms of racing. On the one hand, you've got the new industrialized America here. On the other hand, you're going back to Le Mans with a hypercar in a couple years. You're essentially doing DFV 2.0, right? This is like the Cosworth of old. Why do you, when you're talking to Bill Ford, when you're talking to the shareholders, how do you justify this spend and this drive to go racing?
Well, a couple things. First of all, the tech transfer in this sport that Laurent leads, this team that Laurent leads, is a leader in aerodynamics, predictive failure components and software, software control, the hybrid system, high discharge batteries. These are all core capabilities that we need for the next 5 to 10 years as a company. So the tech transfer is very relevant for us, like maybe four valves or overhead cams were in the '60s, but the tech transfer is totally different today. Formula 1 is a complete digital sport, and that's where we're going as a company. Number one. Number two is that racing, especially in the off-road world, gives us credibility for customers that the product they buy has real capability that's been tested in a way that a brand who doesn't race can't say. And that's what Porsche and Ferrari knew for a long time, especially for us in the off-road world. This is really important. Racing is a fundamental part of our company's business because to beat all the great off-road brands and to establish ourselves, now we're 2x Jeep sales in the US, to keep that going and keep growing the off-road brand, off-road racing into Baja is where our customers will say, 'Hey, that Ford has the real deal. It's the real deal. It's not a poser product.' So racing is integral to our credibility as a company.
And you've obviously got a deep, rich history there, and you're bringing your software and battery technology, those capabilities to Red Bull Racing. But for you, Laurent, this is a whole new thing, right? Building the engine. I know you're getting a lot of help from Ford. What are they helping you with on the fuel side?
Look, they've been helping us on many different topics, and that list of topics is expanding every day. But let me give you a couple of practical examples. Jim's team have unique advanced manufacturing capabilities that we use to produce some of the most critical parts of our engine. And not only are they able to manufacture these parts for us, but also they do it in less time than we would do otherwise. And that gives us a crucial advantage. Our business is a time-to-market business. We call it a time-to-race business. And when we are able to manufacture complex components in a shorter amount of time at this incredible level of quality that we are looking for, that's a key competitive advantage.
Especially since I think you've said you gave up some time focused on last year's car, so you're in a hurry to make sure that this year, this new car when Max gets in it in Bahrain, that it's a winner and not a learning moment. How do you make sure that you're winning straight out of the gate?
8 more exchanges in this transcript
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Farley, J. (2026, January 15). Ford CEO Jim Farley, Oracle Red Bull Racing CEO Talk Carmaker Industry | Bloomberg Talks [Interview transcript]. Bloomberg Podcasts. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/640593/
MLA
James Farley. "Ford CEO Jim Farley, Oracle Red Bull Racing CEO Talk Carmaker Industry | Bloomberg Talks." Bloomberg Podcasts, 15 Jan. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/640593/.
BibTeX
@misc{farley2026_640593,
author = {James Farley},
title = {Ford CEO Jim Farley, Oracle Red Bull Racing CEO Talk Carmaker Industry | Bloomberg Talks},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Bloomberg Podcasts. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jan},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/640593/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
