In December 2002, the British motorsport organisation Prodrive purchased Glenn Seton Racing and rebranded it as Ford Performance Racing (FPR), establishing the first official Ford factory team in Australian touring car racing since the Ford Works Team competed from 1962 to 1973. The operation relocated to new headquarters adjacent to the Ford Performance Vehicles factory in Campbellfield and expanded from one car to three, signing Craig Lowndes and David Besnard alongside Glenn Seton.
The early seasons produced mixed results. Lowndes delivered a round win at Phillip Island in 2003 and finished on the Bathurst podium alongside Seton, but both drivers departed at the end of 2004 — Lowndes joining Triple Eight Race Engineering and Seton moving to Dick Johnson Racing. Jason Bright and Greg Ritter replaced them in 2005, with David Brabham standing in for Ritter at season's end. A significant step came in 2006 when Mark Winterbottom joined the team: Bright won the inaugural Bahrain Desert 400, the pair combined to win the Sandown 500, and Winterbottom finished third in the championship. FPR ended the year second in the teams' standings behind the HSV Dealer Team.
Ownership changed in January 2013 when Prodrive sold the team to Rusty French and Rod Nash. The new regime delivered immediately: Winterbottom and co-driver Steven Richards won the 2013 Bathurst 1000. In 2014, newly signed Chaz Mostert partnered Paul Morris to take the 2014 Bathurst 1000, giving the team back-to-back victories in the Great Race.
In 2015 the team was renamed Prodrive Racing Australia following Ford's decision to withdraw its FPV brand. The squad introduced the Ford FG X Falcon and produced one of the most dominant mid-season runs in Supercars history, winning eleven of fifteen races between the Perth Super Sprint and the Sydney Motorsport Park Super Sprint. Winterbottom and co-driver Steve Owen won the Sandown 500, leading home a team one-two with Mostert and Cam Waters. Despite Mostert suffering a heavy qualifying crash that ended his Bathurst weekend, Winterbottom held on to win his first drivers' championship — and the team's first — though the teams' title was narrowly lost to Triple Eight at the final round.
In 2016, the team's management reformed the Tickford automotive brand, and in 2018 the racing operation was renamed Tickford Racing accordingly. That season Richie Stanaway joined as a fourth full-time driver and the Rod Nash Racing Racing Entitlement Contract was absorbed directly into the team, making Tickford officially a four-car operation.
Through the late 2010s, Tickford also supported several customer teams by providing cars and technical preparation: Rod Nash Racing, Team 18, Super Black Racing, Britek Motorsport, and 23Red Racing each operated at various points as satellite entries. The 23Red Racing programme, run with Will Davison as driver, was folded back into Tickford in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic caused the withdrawal of principal sponsor Milwaukee Tools.
Tickford has maintained a consistent presence in the second-tier Super2 Series, developing future main-series drivers through what was later rebranded as Tickford Autosport. Cam Waters won the Super2 championship while on the Tickford ladder in 2015. In 2024 Rylan Gray became the youngest round winner in series history. The 2025 season brought exceptional collective results: the team secured eight of twelve race wins, six of eleven pole positions, the Teams Championship, and Gray won the drivers' title before being promoted to the main Supercars series with Dick Johnson Racing for 2026.