Ford boss hails Verstappen's feedback: 'The details he can provide are impressive'

This season marks Ford’s first return to Formula 1 in 22 years. Together with Red Bull Powertrains, Ford is developing the engines for Red Bull Racing and Racing Bulls. As Global Director of Ford Performance, Rushbrook has led this project over the past three and a half years. In Miami, GPblog spoke to him exclusively about what the collaboration with Red Bull, and specifically with Verstappen, gives him that no computer can provide.

Because the early phase of a new engine program isn’t just about what the data measures. It’s also about what the driver feels, and how he can feed that back to the engineers in Milton Keynes.

Rushbrook goes beyond compliments in the conversation. He explains concretely what Verstappen does that his engineers can’t extract from data alone. It’s about the subtle layer behind the numbers: the way the energy delivery from the electric component translates into feel in the steering, the pedal, and the rear of the car.

The tyre’s contact patch with the asphalt is a critical point in the 2026 Formula 1. The new hybrid regulations with fifty percent electric power make the way power is delivered fundamentally different from previous years. An overly abrupt transition from electric to thermal power, or the wrong harvesting strategy in a braking zone, is immediately felt by the driver, but can sometimes look normal in the data. Verstappen can pinpoint that difference.

There’s a third dimension to what Rushbrook describes. Not the colder technical data, not the subtle physical feedback, but something even harder to measure: the driver’s confidence in what the engine will do.

In the 2026 cars, that confidence is especially valuable. The balance between electric power and internal combustion power is new for all drivers. Who knows what the car will do in turn three when he goes full throttle out of a hairpin? Verstappen, with his ability to describe it precisely, helps Ford and Red Bull find that calibration faster than they would infer from the data alone.

Rushbrook also points out in Miami that Ford has the luxury of two teams and four drivers — Red Bull with Verstappen and Isack Hadjar, and RB with Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad. That yields four different sets of driver feedback on the same engine, on the same circuits, in the same conditions.

Where other new engine suppliers start with one team and thus have a single data source, Ford can immediately draw cross-links: what does Verstappen feel that Hadjar doesn’t mention? What does Lindblad describe in Suzuka that differs from Lawson in the same session? Those are the questions that speed up calibration.

This weekend, the Red Bull Powertrains-Ford engine will run for the first time on a circuit that specifically rewards engine power. The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal has the longest straights on the calendar and requires a low-downforce setup, which means cars spend longer and harder at full throttle than at any other track. The feedback Verstappen has provided over the past four races will be tested this weekend for the first time in conditions that come closest to a pure engine test.

The way Rushbrook describes how fast the feedback loop runs — from what Verstappen feels, to what the engineers in Milton Keynes see, to what is adjusted in the calibration — indicates that Canada is more than a race for Ford. It’s a benchmark.