Haas F1 has signed its replacement for the outgoing Esteban Ocon. The program has agreed to terms with Rafael Câmara, the current Formula 2 championship leader, to the team in what is being described as a multi-year deal.
The signing means that Haas will promote the most decorated driver currently competing in the official Formula 1 ladder. While Câmara leads the F2 championship over Nikola Tsolov by just seven points, he has already proven himself with successive titles in Formula Regional Europe and F3 over the past two seasons. While he won the Formula Regional title in his second season, he conquered F3 as a rookie, and would accomplish the same feat in F2 if he holds onto his slim lead over Tsolov over two remaining scheduled rounds.
Câmara will pair with Oliver Bearman. Both are Ferrari-linked drivers, setting up the intra-team rivalry as a potential battle to replace Lewis Hamilton at the Scuderia if and when the 41-year-old seven-time champion steps away from the team. Bearman sits 13th in the championship with a handful of races left in his second full-time season at Haas, identical to the position he held in the standings last year.
While a potential promotion to Ferrari will be a storyline that follows both Câmara and Bearman in the years to come, their immediate assignment is elevating the Haas F1 team. The Toyota-backed American outfit currently sits seventh in the constructor’s championship, a result that would tie 2024 as the second-best in the team’s history. Haas has finished in the top half of the constructor’s standings just once ever, taking fifth in 2018. The team has still never recorded a podium finish in any single grand prix—a troublesome piece of trivia that the two Ferrari juniors will be hoping to change next year.
Fred Smith’s love of cars comes from his fascination with auto racing. Unfortunately, that passion led him to daily drive a high-mileage, first-year Porsche Panamera. He is still thinking about the last lap of the 2011 Indianapolis 500.