The tragedy of Ford's last go at F1 | Thank Frankel it's Friday

I mention this now on the back of Ford’s announcement that it will return to Formula 1 in 2026 in a technical partnership with Red Bull (and therefore Alpha Tauri) because of course, 23 years back, it was Ford paying the bill for all that advertising. Indeed the name might have been Jaguar, but like the Alpine F1 team of today, that was purely a case of marketing convenience. As Alpine is Renault today, so too was Jaguar actually Ford back then. And they really, absolutely thought it was going to work.

Nor was this a case of Ford blowing in with a suitcase full of greenbacks and just assuming its money would buy victory. It had bought the Stewart Grand Prix team, a giant-killing little outfit which had gone from nothing to race winners in just three seasons. In 1999 it came fourth in the Constructors’ Championship, beaten only by the Ferrari, McLaren, and Jordan in what would prove to be its best-ever season.

So it had the team. In Paul Stewart, it had the team principal who’d achieved so much both in F1 and the lower formulae. In Eddie Irvine, championship runner-up the previous season, it had the driver too, supported by Johnny Herbert who’d brought Stewart that win at the European Grand Prix just a few months earlier. Privately, the team was also hopeful that finally it even had the right engine, the CR-2 version of Cosworth’s 3.0-litre V10 rumoured to produce over 800bhp at 17,500rpm. ‘We’ve seen 20,000rpm on the bench,’ I remember one of its engineers telling me in confidence I hope I can be forgiven for breaking 23 years later. All the pieces appeared in place.

And at first in Melbourne, the optimism seemed justified. Irvine was a steady seventh in a greasy first practice, though only 10^th in the second and third sessions as the team worked on the set up. In qualifying though, it was back in P7, best of the rest behind those McLarens, Ferraris and Jordans. It might not have been exactly what the team had hoped, but it was where it should probably have reasonably expected to be, and a solid enough platform upon which to build a season.

But it never happened. Herbert had a miserable weekend, qualifying two places off the back of the grid in 20^th, over two seconds behind his team-mate, then stopping with a cooked clutch after just two laps, the first retirement of the race. Five laps later Irvine was out too, spinning his Jaguar to avoid and errant Arrows and blowing his engine in the process. Jaguar had crossed the world and redecorated a city for approximately 11 minutes of racing.

Thereafter the season fell apart. Paul Stewart had to leave the team on health grounds in April, leaving the cars as perennial also-rans, finishing somewhere in the midfield if they finished at all. In almost half the races one or both failed to see the chequered flag. By the close of play the team had scored just four points, leaving it ninth in the Constructors, beating only the literally pointless Prost and Minardi teams.

In the seasons to come, a succession of team principals including Bobby Rahal and Niki Lauda came and went, none able to drag Jaguar Racing even back to where it had left off as Stewart, let alone where Ford reckoned it should be, duking it out with Ferrari and McLaren. A botched bid to nick Adrian Newey out from under McLaren’s nose in 2001 – leading to the press release announcing his arrival at Jaguar actually being written before Ron Dennis coaxed him back – seemed to sum up very well the misfortunes of this perennially unlucky team. At the end of 2004, with Jaguar Racing finishing seventh in the Constructors’ for the third time in succession, Ford pulled the plug.

But the story of that team did not end there, nor even close. Because Ford didn’t shut the team, but sold it to a company that made caffeine-loaded fizzy drinks called Red Bull. We know that story went rather better. So it’s rather fitting that Ford is now jumping back into bed with the same team it once owned all those years ago. And I understand from someone at Ford who would know that there are still some people working there who were originally employed by Jaguar Racing all those years ago. How good it would be for them if Ford’s return to Formula 1 brought the success that Jaguar Racing so sorely missed.

Photography courtesy of Motorsport Images