In December 2002, UK-based Prodrive purchased Glenn Seton Racing and renamed it Ford Performance Racing, positioning the team as an official factory Ford operation — the first since the Ford Works Team active from 1962 to 1973. The expanded team initially ran three cars for Glenn Seton, Craig Lowndes, and David Besnard, moving into a new headquarters adjacent to the Ford Performance Vehicles factory in Campbellfield.
Early seasons were disappointing relative to the team's resources. Lowndes recorded a second place at Bathurst in 2003 before leaving for Triple Eight Race Engineering. Jason Bright joined for 2005 and posted multiple front-row starts and a championship win in Bahrain in 2006. Mark Winterbottom, who joined the team in 2006, won the Sandown 500 with Bright and quickly became the team's talisman.
Will Davison joined alongside Winterbottom in 2011, and the pairing gave FPR consistent championship contention in 2011 and 2012. In January 2013 Prodrive sold the team to Rusty French and Rod Nash.
Under new ownership, the team's peak results came in rapid succession. Winterbottom and Steven Richards won the 2013 Bathurst 1000, then newly signed Chaz Mostert and Paul Morris won the 2014 Bathurst 1000 — making the team the first since the Holden Racing Team in the 1990s to win Bathurst in back-to-back seasons.
In 2015 the team was renamed Prodrive Racing Australia following Ford's decision to phase out its FPV brand. The new Ford FG X Falcon was introduced, and the year produced the team's most dominant mid-season run: eleven race wins from fifteen over a central stretch of the calendar. Winterbottom and Steve Owen won the Sandown 500. Despite Mostert being ruled out for the rest of the season after a serious qualifying crash at Bathurst, Winterbottom secured enough points to take the drivers' championship — the team's first.
In 2016 Prodrive management re-formed the Tickford vehicle enhancement brand, and in 2018 the team took the Tickford Racing name. Richie Stanaway joined as a third driver and the Rod Nash Racing car was formally absorbed, creating a four-car Tickford operation with Winterbottom, Waters, Mostert, and Stanaway.
The Ford Mustang arrived for the 2019 Supercars season, replacing the Falcon and marking the beginning of the team's Mustang era. Mostert departed after 2018 and was replaced by Lee Holdsworth. James Courtney joined the team in 2019. The squad contracted over subsequent seasons; by 2022 the team ran two cars for Waters and Randle, a lineup that has continued into the current period.
Waters has been the team's frontrunner in the Mustang era, winning multiple individual races and regularly qualifying towards the front. Randle has developed into a consistent points scorer. The team also competes through its Tickford Autosport program in the Super2 Series, which delivered the 2015 and 2025 Super2 championships and has provided a development pathway for drivers including Cam Waters, Chaz Mostert, Thomas Randle, and Rylan Gray.
Throughout its history the team has prepared customer cars for affiliated teams. Rod Nash Racing used Tickford-prepared cars from 2010 to 2017, and the arrangement produced notable results including David Reynolds winning the 2013 Gold Coast race and Chaz Mostert taking the 2017 Pirtek Enduro Cup with Steve Owen while competing under Rod Nash's banner.
Other satellite relationships included Team 18 (2013-14), Super Black Racing (2015-16), Britek Motorsport (2017), and 23Red Racing (2019-20), the latter running Will Davison until the team withdrew mid-2020 due to COVID-19-related financial pressures.
Tickford Racing represents one of the longest-running threads in Australian touring car history, stretching back through the Prodrive/FPR era to the Glenn Seton Racing roots. The team's two Bathurst victories and one drivers' championship stand as its headline achievements, with the Mustang era marked by competitive consistency if not yet another title. The Tickford Autosport junior program has become one of the most productive driver pipelines in the series, reinforcing the team's importance to the broader Supercars ecosystem.