American car manufacturer Ford have shown that the ABB FIA Formula E Championship remains one of their options in the future.
Mark Rushbrook, global head of Ford Performance Motorsports, told Autosport that the ABB FIA Formula E Championship was “still on the sheet of paper we are looking at” as it considers what he called “electrified motorsport”.
Rushbrook‘s comments come a year following Ford‘s advanced talks with FE and appeared close to joining.
Ford had also made clear interest in electrified rallycross, prior to their withdrawal from the World Rallycross Championship.
“We have been looking very closely through 2018 across all different forms of racing to understand what the options are for electrified motorsport, whether hybrid or full-electric”, Rushbrook told Autosport.
“Given what our cycle plan is for road cars we are very interested in adding an electrified form of motorsport in the near future.
“We continue to study all or most of those options, and I suspect we will be making decisions in early 2019.”
Rushbrook believes there is “still room” for Ford on the FE grid even it will reach its 12-team, 24-car capacity with the arrival of Porsche in season six in 2019/20.
“It would mean joining up with an existing team, partnering with someone on the grid today”, he said.
Ford would not be able to develop its own powertrain for season six because it is not on the list of homologated manufacturers published last April and would need to register its intent to do so for season seven by February 1 should it find a partner.
The manufacturer is known to have had discussions with the Penske-owned Dragon Racing team 12 months ago.
