Rafael Câmara was today confirmed to be joining Haas F1 team for the 2027 season. The current Formula 2 championship leader will make his F1 debut next year after five years on the junior single-seater ladder as part of the Scuderia Ferrari Driver Academy. Feeder Series charts his career to date as he prepares to graduate to the pinnacle of motorsport.

By Cliona Sheerin, Hanne Scheepers, Michael McClure and Calla Kra-Caskey

Câmara will take the place of Esteban Ocon, who was announced to be leaving Haas last month. The 21-year-old Brazilian driver is expected to line up alongside longtime Ferrari junior Ollie Bearman, who has raced for the American team since 2025. 

The current F2 championship leader has already turned plenty of laps in F1 machinery, participating in a number of testing of previous cars outings in his capacity as a Ferrari junior. But it was his presence and performance at a test with Haas at the end of August that led many to believe a place in the highest level of single-seater racing was imminent. 

Câmara reportedly impressed the team when he took to the Portimão Circuit in the VF-25 in what was effectively a shootout against 2025 F2 champion Leonardo Fornaroli and Haas reserve driver Ryō Hirakawa over the final weekend in August.

The Brazilian driver is no stranger to F1 comparisons. He spent the early years of his single-seater career playing second fiddle to Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who reached F1 two years ahead of him. And his lap times have been compared to Bearman’s for years, with both drivers joining the Ferrari stable at the end of 2021. But Câmara’s most obvious mirror on the F1 grid is his countryman Gabriel Bortoleto, whose career path – a year in F4, two years in FR, one year in each F2 and F3 – he followed exactly, even sharing the same championship-winning teams of Trident and then Invicta in F1’s top support series. 

At the same time, Câmara’s career is impressive in its own right. In 2021, his final year in karts, he won the WSK Champions Cup, WSK Super Master Series and the Champions of the Future Euro Series championships in the OK class. Those results earned him a place at the FDA Scouting World Finals later that year. 

Alongside Bearman, Tuukka Taponen and Jesse Lacey, Câmara took part in the five-day intensive training camp, which involved extensive testing and evaluation across a variety of racing-related attributes. Câmara and Bearman eventually won places in the academy after the programme ended.

In 2022, Câmara made his debut in single-seaters with Prema Racing for the F4 UAE season – a debut delayed by one round after he reportedly contracted COVID-19. He achieved his first podium finish when he finally debuted in Dubai and claimed his first wins in single-seaters the following week at the same track. With three wins out of four races in the penultimate round, he went into the finale as a title contender and won the first race of the weekend, but a retirement in race three meant he had to settle for second place in the final standings.

Câmara remained with Prema Racing for a dual campaign in ADAC F4 and Italian F4 later that year. In ADAC F4, he scored seven podiums, including one victory, in the first half of the season, but. his title aspirations suffered a setback when he had to miss the Nürburgring and Lausitzring round after again contracting COVID. He returned for the series’ second visit to the Nürburgring, where he secured two more pole positions and podium finishes – but Antonelli and Taylor Barnard were too far ahead of him in the standings. He ended the year third overall and with the rookie championship in hand.

Câmara achieved the same overall result in Italian F4, in which he ran the full season. He began the season in Imola on a high with a victory and an additional podium finish, and strong performances in the next four rounds yielded one win and six further podiums. A more difficult end to the season, however, left him without a podium finish at Monza and a single third-place finish at Mugello, enough to finish third in the overall standings and second behind Antonelli in the rookie championship.

By that point, FRegional came calling, and Câmara completed tests with Prema at the end of 2022 ahead of a full campaign in 2023. To prepare, he competed in FR Middle East at the beginning of the year with the Prema-operated Mumbai Falcons squad, taking six podiums and finishing third in the standings. The Brazilian driver started the European season strong, taking a podium finish in the opening race at Imola. He took his first win in round four at Spa-Francorchamps – the same track where he won his first ADAC F4 race – and notched another win at the Red Bull Ring plus three further podiums to finish fifth overall.

Until then, Câmara had largely raced in the shadow of teammate Antonelli. The Mercedes junior, more than a year Câmara’s junior, had beaten him to the ADAC F4, Italian F4, FR Middle East and now FR Europe titles in dominant fashion. Plus, with Bearman excelling in F2 and Tuukka Taponen rising up the ranks himself, Câmara’s place in the Ferrari pecking order came into question too. Against such competition, top-five championship finishes and a smattering of wins would not be enough.

By all accounts, 2024 would be a decisive year for Câmara’s career prospects, and he started his second season of both FR Middle East and FR Europe with a year of experience under his belt and title challenges to mount.

Things got off to a rocky start in the Middle East. With no podiums in the first two rounds and none at all aside from his two wins, he had less than half the points of champion Taponen. But by the time the European season rolled around, he delivered.

Across the first three rounds of the season, he scored three poles, four wins and two further podiums to pull out an astonishing 73-point margin over Taponen, who had tallied only 63 total. It was an opening stanza reminiscent of fellow Ferrari junior Dino Beganovic’s dominant start to 2022, and like the Swede, he used the early buffer to carry him through the rest of the season.  Câmara added another win in the first race at Le Castellet from his first of four consecutive pole positions to head into the summer break with a 50-point advantage over Taponen.

After the break, the Brazilian added another win at Imola before experiencing a tough weekend at Spielberg, where he failed to score any points. Luckily for him, Taponen also failed to score. The gap between the two stood at 61 entering Barcelona, and with a third place in race one and a fourth place in race two, Câmara had enough of a buffer to secure the title a round early. He ended the season with another podium and win at Monza, bringing his total to seven wins and his gap over runner-up James Wharton to 75.

Câmara moved up to F3 in 2025 with Trident, who had propelled Bortoleto and Leonardo Fornaroli to the title in successive seasons. There, he immediately hit the ground running by converting back-to-back poles into successive feature race wins in Melbourne and Sakhir. His third pole came a round later in Imola and yielded a third-place finish in the feature race.

After consecutive retirements in the Monaco feature race and the Barcelona sprint, Câmara returned to winning ways with another lights-to-flag win in the Barcelona feature race. Consistent top-10 finishes in Spielberg, Silverstone and Spa meant he arrived at the penultimate round in Budapest with the opportunity to clinch the title. And that he did in style with his fourth pole-to-win conversion of the season in the feature race.

In the background, the comparisons with countryman Bortoleto – who had moved to F1 after winning the F2 title with Invicta Racing – were intensifying. Both drivers had used early-season feature race wins to set up their title challenges with Trident, and both showcased their overtaking prowess by clawing through the field in Monza – Bortoleto from 22nd to first in the 2024 F2 feature race, Câmara from 30th to fifth in the 2025 F3 feature race. The end result of Câmara’s title assault – a 42-point cushion over nearest championship rival Nikola Tsolov, bolstered by a record-breaking five poles – got the F1 paddock talking again.

With a move to Invicta Racing for the 2026 F2 season, Câmara followed the path Fornaroli and Bortoleto had taken before him – both to the title. The pressure was on not only to repeat their achievements but to become the first driver since Oscar Piastri to win at the FR, F3 and F2 levels in consecutive years. It’s a trajectory that, for the moment, he is on course to continue. 

Câmara took the championship lead for the first time following the last round in Baku. Key to his accomplished rookie season – as in his championship-winning F3 and FR seasons before it – has been his qualifying consistency, which has brought him five pole positions and a worst result of sixth in the opening round in Melbourne. Even then, Câmara claimed his first F2 podium that weekend, finishing second in the feature race, and a third place in the feature race at new venue Miami helped put him into the championship conversation immediately.

At the same time, cracks began to appear in the foundation of Câmara’s championship fight. Victory in that Miami feature was possible were it not for two small errors while defending the lead in the closing laps. More concerning, however, was his hero-to-zero collapse in Monaco, where struggles with getting his Pirellis up to temperature saw him lose out to Tsolov once more and retire from the feature race after taking pole. For a driver whose previous title campaigns were built on strong starts, being seventh in the standings was unfamiliar ground.

Luckily for the Invicta Racing driver, he proved he could bounce back. Just a few days later, as F2 arrived in Barcelona, Câmara picked up where he left off in terms of qualifying form, grabbing his second pole in succession. From there, Câmara showed his tyre management and overtaking prowess, running longer than his rivals on the option tyre and slicing through the field after pitting for primes to win by 12.406 seconds – the largest winning margin of the season and the eighth largest in F2 history. 

The Brazilian put on a similar show in the Spa feature race, passing alternate-strategy runners on the Kemmel Straight with ease to convert his fourth pole of the season into his second victory. Another 20 points in Budapest helped him claw back the deficit to Gabriele Minì and Tsolov ahead, while after the summer break, pole position and second place in the feature race in Monza helped him leapfrog Minì, who failed to score.

The comparisons to Bortoleto and the 2024 title fight had already been made, but they were only strengthened at this point. Câmara’s gap to Campos Racing’s Tsolov stood at 11 points leaving Monza, while Bortoleto was just 10.5 points behind Campos’ Isack Hadjar leaving the same round in 2024. Both points-leading Red Bull juniors, also both 19 at the time, went on to have scoreless rounds immediately after.

Tsolov’s non-score at the Madring gave Câmara a golden opportunity to overturn a once formidable deficit entirely. He didn’t quite capitalise on it, scoring only four points from the weekend, but it was enough to put him within touching distance entering the three-race round in Baku. There, Câmara out-scored Tsolov for the fifth round on the trot courtesy of a fourth-place finish and a victory in the two feature races. In the second, he expertly balanced managing his gap to penalty-bound race leader Alex Dunne while defending from a hard-charging Tsolov on the streets of the Azeri capital. He left with a seven-point lead atop of the championship as the series heads into the final stages of the season. 

Câmara won’t eclipse current Ferrari F1 driver Charles Leclerc’s record of eight poles in a single F2 season from 2017, and the championship’s victory and points records are likewise unlikely to be beaten. He is only four points off Fornaroli’s 211-point tally from last season and 7.5 points off Bortoleto’s 214.5 as he looks to take Invicta’s third drivers’ title in a row.

Câmara will join his compatriot Bortoleto on the grid next season, with two Brazilians entering an F1 race for the first time since Felipe Massa and Felipe Nasr did so in the 2016 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. While he is set to become the 34th Brazilian in F1, he will be the first from the state of Pernambuco in north-eastern Brazil, where his maternal grandmother Niege Rossiter and her father Nelson Rossiter competed in occasional sports car races near their Recife home in the 1960s.

Born 5 May 2005, Câmara will be the fourth-youngest driver expected to take up a spot on next year’s F1 grid. There are just three days between him and Bearman, which would make their age gap the closest between teammates in F1 since 1965. 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency