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Ford Steals Triple Eight from GM

Triple Eight is switching for Ford Performance for the 2026 Australian Supercars Championship. Image: Supplied

By Andrew Clarke

Date posted: 31 January 2025

Ford has shocked the Supercars world today by announcing that it has enticed Australia’s most successful racing team, Triple Eight, back into the fold 15 years after its commercial arrangements sent the Brisbane-based squad into the General Motors world.

It means the 2026 season will be full of change with Toyota coming into the sport with Walkinshaw Andretti United and one other team and we expect one of the Ford teams to jump the divide next year as well to take on a more senior role and maybe even replace Triple Eight as the GM homologation team.

In announcing the deal to bring Triple Eight into its family, Ford also announced its intention to run Triple Eight as its homologation teams, but will first need ratification from the majority of its Supercar teams to make that change.

AUTO ACTION believes this will be a formality and that it will result in Dick Johnson Racing being dumped from that role in a seismic shift for Ford’s most famous team, which will also lose the engine deal.

Ford and Triple Eight will be chasing Bathurst success again.

This means the recruitment of Triple Eight will do more than just bring the sport’s most successful team back into its fold. Since leaving Ford in 2010, Triple Eight has dominated the sport and spanked Ford often as it piled on Championships and Bathurst wins.

Jamie Whincup says in AA’s exclusive interview, ‘Whincup: Ford Return was Logical Not Emotional’ that the entire shift for the team came in a matter of weeks, not months and was completed easily.

News of the bombshell change first started leaking to AUTO ACTION last week and we were able to confirm the rumours – at the same time as getting tied up in a legal ‘non-disclosure’ loop along with the other major players in the Australian motorsport media world, which bound media to the 12.15pm AEST embargo today.

The switch from General Motors to Ford has caught the General on the hop too, with little notification before the announcement today in Melbourne.

While the key players inside the GM world were worried about losing one of its teams to Toyota next season – now they have to face life without its winningest and most popular team.

Ford’s Global Director of Ford Performance, Mark Rushbrook, said in announcing the coup: “We’ve always admired Triple Eight’s unwavering commitment to excellence. Their engineering prowess and tireless pursuit of victory are almost incomparable.

“But more than that, there’s a shared history, a bond forged in the fires of competition, that makes this partnership feel so right.

“This is about looking forward, about building a future together, and conquering new challenges.”

Andrew Birkic, President and CEO of Ford Australia, added, “This partnership is about delivering an unforgettable experience for our fans, and is a statement of our commitment to Australian motorsport. This is also a demonstration of Ford’s motorsport ambition, which is stronger than ever.”

For Whincup and Triple Eight it represents a full circle, having initially operated as a Ford team from its origins in 2003 to 2010 when it switched manufacturers.

Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup share the front row at the start of the 2009 Supercars season in Adelaide, the last with Ford. Image: Mark Horsburgh/LAT Photographic

Whincup, when talking to AUTO ACTION last night, didn’t want to be drawn into the romance of a return to the Blue Oval; instead, he wanted to paint the decision as a forward-looking move that locks down his team’s future.

“It is big news. It’s a huge, huge thing for Triple Eight,” he said from the States. “We assessed our manufacturer choice towards the middle of last year and then started to do a bit of due diligence on what was the best way forward.

“Not so much for now, but more for three, four, five years down the track. It opened up the conversation with Ford Performance.

The next chapter of Triple Eight and Ford is coming in 2026.

“The more we spoke about it, the more it made complete sense to form a partnership. That’s exactly what we did.”

The ramifications for the sport are not yet clear, but they are sure to shake up the landscape in 2026 as much as Toyota’s arrival.

See below for AA’s interview with Triple Eight CEO Jamie Whincup.

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