BYD's long-rumoured interest in Formula 1 has stepped firmly out of the speculation column, with vice president Stella Li openly confirming that the Chinese electric-vehicle giant has held formal talks with F1 chief executive Stefano Domenicali about joining the grid.
In comments to SportMediaset, dated 26 April and now circulating widely after Drive.com.au's follow-up reporting on 8 May, Li described the meeting in matter-of-fact terms.
"We met Stefano Domenicali in Shanghai," she said. "We are always in close contact."
The scale of the disclosure is unusual. BYD has historically been guarded about its motorsport intentions, even as Bloomberg and other outlets reported throughout March that the Shenzhen-based manufacturer was exploring both a Formula 1 entry and a Le Mans-style endurance programme. Confirmation from a vice president, naming the meeting and the F1 CEO, takes the conversation past rumour and into the realm of formal commercial negotiation.
Li was equally clear about the cultural pull of the championship. "I like Formula 1 because it's about passion and culture, and people dream of being in Formula 1," she said.
She was more guarded on the structural question — whether BYD would buy an existing team, build a new one, or enter as a power-unit supplier — but the underlying technical pitch was explicit. "We are discussing the possibility of joining the Formula 1 grid, which would provide the opportunity to put our technology to the test," Li said.
That technology argument is central to BYD's case. The 2026 power unit regulations rebalance F1 toward a 50-50 split between internal combustion and electrical energy, with the MGU-K alone responsible for around 350 kilowatts of deployment. BYD, which produces more battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles than any other manufacturer in the world, has spent the better part of a decade refining the kind of high-density battery packaging and thermal management that the new F1 architecture rewards.
No Chinese manufacturer has ever competed in Formula 1. Honda, Toyota, Renault, Ferrari, Mercedes and most of the European automotive establishment have all taken their turn — but the world's largest car-making nation has remained on the sidelines. BYD's entry, in any form, would change the cultural geography of the championship in a way few of its post-2026 storylines can match.
The Cadillac precedent is also unavoidable. Liberty's expansion of the grid to 11 teams in 2026, with General Motors-backed Cadillac taking the new slot, demonstrated that an OEM-backed entry can be wedged into the regulatory framework if the political will exists. BYD-watchers inside the paddock have been monitoring whether a 12th-team carve-out or a power-unit-only entry path could be opened next.
For F1, the strategic logic is obvious. China is one of two markets where the championship has consistently underperformed its global growth curve — the United States is the other — and Liberty has spent meaningful resources rebuilding the Shanghai event into a calendar fixture. A BYD entry, even at supplier level, would deliver the kind of domestic-manufacturer story line that turns a foreign sport into a national one.
Nothing has been signed. Li's confirmation of the Domenicali meeting is the strongest public marker yet, but BYD has not committed to a structural pathway and Liberty has not opened a formal expression-of-interest window. What has changed is that the conversation is now on the record, between named principals, in public — and that is a very different kind of pressure on both sides than the Bloomberg leaks of March.
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*Originally published on [News Formula One](https://newsformula.one/article/byd-f1-entry-stella-li-domenicali-shanghai-meeting-2026). Visit for full coverage.*