Why Doesn't Porsche Have An F1 Team?

Porsche hasn't been involved with Formula 1 since 1991, though there have been a lot of fast Porsches. But the car world caught wind back in 2021 of the iconic brand's plan to return to the sport in 2026. Then those hopes were dashed when Porsche failed to find a partner team, pivoting the company to focus on Formula E instead.

In 2021, Oliver Blume, CEO of the Volkswagen Group that owns Porsche, announced that the brand was looking into Formula 1 but hadn't yet decided. Volkswagen was looking to include Audi as well, with Thomas Laudenbach, Porsche's vice president of motorsports, saying later that year that things were going in the right direction for an F1 return, according to India's Car And Bike. 

This ended up falling through after Porsche tried to get a major stake in Red Bull's F1 team in return for an investment in it. In the summer of 2022, a leaked document revealed Porsche's plans to buy 50% of Red Bull Technology, the energy drink's F1 operation, with plans to join Formula 1 in 2026. Later that year, however, Porsche announced that the partnership talks had ended without an agreement, with Red Bull likely wanting more independence. 

Porsche then proposed getting a stake in Aston Martin for an investment there, but the British car company instead partnered with Honda — which didn't ask for any share. Ultimately, Porsche was left without any partners and Formula 1 became out of reach.

Porsche is now focused solely on the Formula E all-electric race series, competing since the 2019-2020 season. This seems to have been a positive direction for the brand, whose team won the Season 10 Championship title in 2024,  its first title, with Pascal Wehrlein crowned the Drivers' World Champion. The TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E Team notched seven wins out of 16 races — four for driver Antonio Felix da Costa, three for Wehrlein — and the Andretti Formula E team also won with the Porsche 99X Electric. So there were eight wins in all for the Porsche 99X Electric, which can go 198.8 miles per hour — the fastest Formula E car ever built. (Here are the fastest cars for Formula 1.)

With so much invested in Formula E, it would be tough for Porsche to pursue F1. This apparently isn't a concern, however. 

"It is off the table," Autosport recently quoted Laudenbach as saying. "Right now, F1 is not a task for us and we are not spending any energy on that. We are only focused on what we do right now, and if you look at it, we have many different activities: we are well-occupied and extremely happy with what we do."