Rafael Camara will become the 34th Brazilian to race in Formula 1 after Haas confirmed the 21-year-old will make his debut with the American team in 2027, replacing Esteban Ocon on a multi-year contract. The Ferrari Driver Academy member leads the Formula 2 championship by seven points with two rounds remaining and will be the only rookie on next year’s grid.
Camara’s promotion was sealed by a two-day evaluation test at Portimao in August, where he drove Haas’s 2025 car alongside three rivals with more experience of Formula 1 machinery: reigning F2 champion Leonardo Fornaroli, now a McLaren reserve, Toyota’s Ryo Hirakawa and former Alpine driver Jack Doohan. Camara was the fastest of the four.
“For sure it was an intense two days,” he said. “It was a new track, new team. You have two days to make sure you are comfortable and you deliver what you need to deliver. I think I have always been able to extract the most of myself.”
A junior record that demanded a seat
Camara arrives in Formula 1 with one of the strongest junior CVs of the past decade. Born in Recife in May 2005, he was runner-up in the OK Junior class of the 2019 Karting World Championship before joining the Ferrari Driver Academy at the end of 2021.
His single-seater progression has been close to linear:
- 2022: second in F4 UAE with six wins, third in both Italian F4 and ADAC F4
- 2024: Formula Regional European champion with seven victories — a single-season record for the series — clinched with a round to spare and a 75-point margin
- 2025: FIA Formula 3 champion as a rookie with Trident, taking four feature-race wins and five poles, and becoming the first driver to secure the title before the final round since the series was reformatted in 2019
- 2026: three wins, five poles and seven podiums for Invicta Racing in F2, with a qualifying average of 2.54
He leads F2 on 207 points, seven clear of Nikola Tsolov, with Alexander Dunne a further 18 back on 189. Errors in Monaco and Montreal cost him a cushion that would otherwise have been commanding, and 78 points remain available across Qatar and Abu Dhabi. “The aim is to finish on a high,” Camara said.
Win it, and he joins Charles Leclerc, George Russell and Oscar Piastri as a back-to-back F3 and F2 champion who graduated straight to a race seat. It would also give him three consecutive junior titles in three seasons — a sequence last achieved by Piastri between 2019 and 2021.
Why Haas took the risk
Haas sit seventh in the constructors’ standings on 30 points, and the split between their drivers explains Ocon’s exit. Oliver Bearman has scored 23 of them, with a best finish of fifth in China; Ocon, 30 and in his second year with the team, has seven. Team principal Ayao Komatsu had already been rewarded for backing a Ferrari junior once, having promoted Bearman for 2025, and has now built an all-FDA line-up of two 21-year-olds.
“I’m really excited to sign such a young, amazing talent like Rafael Camara,” Komatsu said. “He showed when we had him drive in our TPC programme in Portugal that he could handle himself very well. The laps he completed were special. He showed us more than just raw speed.”
The Ferrari connection runs deeper than driver development. Ferrari supplies Haas with power units and transmission components, and the Maranello academy now effectively staffs the team’s cockpits. Ocon, who has said he does not want to race in another single-seater series next year, has been linked with test and reserve roles and a possible move to the World Endurance Championship.
Brazil back in numbers
Camara’s signing restores something Brazilian motorsport has not had in a decade. Alongside Gabriel Bortoleto, who retains his Audi seat, Brazil will field two drivers in 2027 for the first time since 2016, when Felipe Massa raced for Williams and Felipe Nasr for Sauber. The country that produced three world champions in Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna had none on the grid between Massa’s retirement and Bortoleto’s arrival in 2025.
Camara will also carry a quieter distinction. He is short-sighted — prescriptions of 2.75 and 2.50, with astigmatism — and races in contact lenses, following Jacques Villeneuve, who won the 1997 title wearing glasses beneath his helmet.
He takes the seat in the second season of Formula 1’s new engine and chassis regulations, a period in which the competitive order is still settling and a midfield team can plausibly gain ground. For a driver who has won at every level he has entered, that timing may matter as much as the car.
Telling his family was the hardest part. “I didn’t know how to say it to them so I just said quickly — I’ll be driving next year,” Camara said. “My dad, he was more emotional. When he came to hug me, it was just… you cannot hold it, it just comes out.”
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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