09-28-2004, 04:37 PM
"After a thorough review over many months Ford Motor Company has decided it can no longer make a compelling business case for any of its brands to compete in Formula One,ÔÇØ said Jaguar's Chairman and Chief Executive, Joe Greenwell. 
Ford apparently is also cutting its WRC program back to only running the European rounds of the championship (no show at Mexico
).
I suppose if Ford operations are hurting it would only make sense to cut the motorsports budgets. As far as F1 goes it doesn't seem like Ford was putting forth the kind of effort they would need in order to be able to compete regularly with the top tier teams. Still, I kind of feel like if they really worked hard and were more efficient they could get a better return on investment. Perhaps if Ford looking at F1 as a tool for training its engineers and doing advanced R&D it'd be more worthwhile for them.
With WRC Ford looked like it was making some serious headway for awhile and I can't help but think that success in WRC would help their sales a lot in Europe. I think they should keep their money in WRC rather than waste it in NASCAR and to a lesser extent, Champ Car.
Oh well, I hope they'll be back soon. Or at the very least maybe they're planning a return to Le Mans.
Ford apparently is also cutting its WRC program back to only running the European rounds of the championship (no show at Mexico
).I suppose if Ford operations are hurting it would only make sense to cut the motorsports budgets. As far as F1 goes it doesn't seem like Ford was putting forth the kind of effort they would need in order to be able to compete regularly with the top tier teams. Still, I kind of feel like if they really worked hard and were more efficient they could get a better return on investment. Perhaps if Ford looking at F1 as a tool for training its engineers and doing advanced R&D it'd be more worthwhile for them.
With WRC Ford looked like it was making some serious headway for awhile and I can't help but think that success in WRC would help their sales a lot in Europe. I think they should keep their money in WRC rather than waste it in NASCAR and to a lesser extent, Champ Car.
Oh well, I hope they'll be back soon. Or at the very least maybe they're planning a return to Le Mans.