Red Bull Ford Powertrains has leveraged the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of industry software to rapidly develop the next generation hybrid ICE/electric-driven power unit for the Formula 1 2026 racing season.
According to Siemens Digital Industries Software, for the 2026 season, Red Bull Ford Powertrains will build power units for both the Oracle Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Alpha Tauri F1 Teams. They will be one of only six manufacturers supplying power units for the F1 series.
In 2021, Red Bull Ford Powertrains has set an ambitious goal of developing 2026-specification sustainable high-speed power units from the ground-up, while meeting new specifications from F1.
Like any start-up, Red Bull Ford Powertrains is breaking new ground with every component design, especially given the lack of historical data, in the extremely secretive world of powertrains development.
Ben Hodgkinson, technical director at Red Bull Powertrains, said that Siemens Xcelerator is the digital backbone of their design and manufacturing efforts.
This enables the company to concurrently engineer hundreds of rapid design evolutions across a large newly formed team, and ensure that each designer has visibility and knowledge of what their colleagues are working on.
“It is especially challenging as we don’t have the luxury of historical data; every component, down to the nuts and bolts of the engine, has to be modeled from scratch,” said Hodgkinson.
“This means the design quality and ease of use from Siemens’ NX, combined with collaboration and lifecycle management with Teamcenter, is a critical factor for success,” he added.
Robert Jones, EVP of global sales and customer success at Siemens Digital Industries Software, observed that the motorsport industry is aggressively pursuing a cleaner, more sustainable future that requires radical reinvention of how teams and suppliers approach all aspects of their development activities.
“By leveraging the benefits of digital transformation, delivered through the use of Siemens Xcelerator, we’re able to help motorsport partners in the field with their discovery, invention and ultimately, delivery of new cleaner solutions on the track, where rubber meets the road, in timescales previously thought unattainable,” said Jones.
