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- Ford is launching a new marketing campaign called “Every Ground Is Our Proving Ground.”
- The campaign highlights how learnings from racing apply to consumer vehicles.
- A series of short episodes featuring real engineers will air on Apple TV during F1 broadcasts.
Ford Motor Co. is returning to the Formula 1 racetrack for the first time in 20 years, and the automaker is hoping to show the world how its engineers use racing to make the Ford cars in their driveway better.
Ford is launching a new global marketing campaign called “Every Ground Is Our Proving Ground” on March 5, when Apple TV begins broadcasting the first F1 practice in Australia at 8:30pm ET.
The Australian Grand Prix race will be held on Saturday, March 7th at 11pm (Eastern Time). Ford will also be participating in the 2026 BFGoodrich Tire Mint 400 Off-Road Race in Las Vegas from March 4th to March 8th.
Ford’s new campaign features a series of vignettes featuring engineers who tell Ford’s racing story and show how the company takes what it learns from racing and applies it to the vehicles it makes for the public. The campaign will continue through the rest of the year, said Michael Cope, Ford’s senior director of consumer marketing.
“The premise of this campaign we are launching with Raptor, Bronco, F1 and other motorsport endeavors is about true ability proven in extreme conditions,” said Cope. “You see our actual engineers and the amount of work they put in when they get to that extreme environment…We know we can compete at the highest level. And we bring those learnings back to consumer-grade vehicles.”
series of short spots
The campaign is an expansion of the “Ready, Set, Ford” global marketing brand campaign that Ford launched in September. This campaign was about more than just promoting a car, it was about how Ford, as a company, puts its customers first. It features highly produced ads that show a variety of Ford vehicles participating in adventures that match people’s lives.
For “Every Ground Is Our Proving Ground,” Ford will use Apple TV to air a narrative series featuring real engineers, without actors or CGI, instead of standard commercials, Cope said. The campaign covers both F1 and Raptor products.
The first spot is 30 seconds long and has no dialogue. It features a Raptor racing in the desert, with shots of a sweaty driver, engineers working on fine-tuning the vehicle, rough desert terrain, and a snake. It cuts to a shot of a Formula 1 race car and the team working on it, and before the car destroys the race track, the tagline “Every ground is our proving ground” appears, followed by the tagline “Ready, Ready, Ford.”
Two 15 second spots will be performed. One features a Formula 1 race, with an engineer inspecting a part and a narrator saying, “A part is never just a part. It has to be designed, built, and tested over and over again until the lights go out.” There’s a shot of the test, then it cuts to a Formula 1 race car with the tagline, “Every ground is our proving ground.”
Another 15-second spot focuses on Ford’s off-road racing, showing the Raptor racing through desert terrain, interspersed with shots of Ford engineers working on engine elements in the design center, all happening as the narrator says, “Baja is a torturous test that pushes every element of the Raptor’s performance. If it can survive it, it can handle almost anything.” It ends with the same catchphrase as the other works.
Baja racing refers to challenging long-distance endurance races, such as the famous Baja 1000, held on Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula.
The fourth 30-second spot features Ford’s Raptor vehicle in a variety of daring off-road racing scenarios, with quick shots of the driver and engineer as the narrator says, “Here’s what we say about the road to greatness: It’s certainly not paved.” Again, it has the same tagline, but with the word “Raptor” in it.
“We’re bringing F1 to Apple TV to show exactly how extreme research and development, tested in the world’s toughest racing environments, translates directly to consumers,” Cope said. “That’s not a marketing pitch. This is completely genuine.”
Tracing Henry Ford’s roots
Cope said the idea behind the campaign was reminiscent of Ford founder Henry Ford.
“Henry Ford used the money he won from sweepstakes races to establish the Ford Motor Company to prove his ideas were good,” Cope said. “Nearly 125 years later, we sit here and Ford Racing is now celebrating this groundbreaking tradition by highlighting how Henry’s boldness still rings true today. This is a story of dirt, grit and human focus.”
Cope said the series will allow it to move stories and narratives forward throughout the racing season as Ford participates in more races.
He cited examples of connecting the dots between Ford’s racing and production vehicles seen in the F-150 Raptor pickup, Bronco Raptor SUV and new all-electric midsize pickup scheduled for release next year.
“F1 aerodynamics plays its part, and the truck’s aerodynamics are more than 15 percent better than other pickup trucks on the market,” Cope said. “This gives us more range and lower costs for our customers. This is just one example of what we can do. We come up with transferable learnings.”
Ability that exists only “in the soil”
Kristen Goslawski, an engineer with the Ford Racing Off-Road Motorsports program who was in Las Vegas on March 4 to prepare for the Mint 400 race, said that for Ford’s first off-road race, they needed race-specific shocks that would fall short of what is installed in vehicles sold to consumers.
“But by continuing to race, we are able to push that envelope and provide our customers with the same technology and capabilities that we have racing at the Baja 1000 or here at the Mint,” Goslawski said. “[The Mint]is a little bit shorter as a race, but it’s still just as important to our development lifecycle as we continue to evolve the product.”
Gosławski said Ford is developing a third-generation shock for the Raptor competing in the Mint 400 that is nearly identical to what customers will receive in the 2026 F-150 Raptor.
“We’re learning hands-on what we can improve on, and then we’re sending information back to our teams and production engineers back in Dearborn,” Goslavsky said. “That’s an ability you can’t find outside of dirt. What makes the track better is the variety of terrain and the true extremes here.”
Jamie L. Lareau is senior auto writer for USA Today and covers Ford Motor Company for the Detroit Free Press. Contact Jamie at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jalalean. To sign up for our automotive newsletter. become a subscriber.
