Ferrari protege Rafael Camara will make his Formula 1 debut in 2027 after signing a multi-year deal to race for Haas.
The team was blown away by Camara's performance in his Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) outing with the team at Portimao in August, where he set an impressive pace in Haas's 2025 F1 car.
That helped Camara beat the likes of McLaren reserve driver Leonardo Fornaroli, Toyota's Ryo Hirakawa, and ex-Alpine F1 driver Jack Doohan in the race to replace incumbent Esteban Ocon.
Ocon's two years at Haas have fallen short of expectations as he has generally been outpaced by Ferrari junior Ollie Bearman.
The Race revealed Haas would split with Ocon during the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend, where it was also known that Camara was the clear favourite to replace him.
Camara won back-to-back titles in the Formula Regional European Championship (an intermediate step between Formula 4 and Formula 3) and F3 in consecutive years before stepping up to Formula 2 in 2026.
The 21-year-old Brazilian currently leads a closely contested F2 championship with two scheduled rounds (Qatar and Abu Dhabi) remaining.
He has won three races and has had a standout qualifying average of 2.54, but it’s been far from a straightforward campaign, with Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu even referencing Camara's tricky weekends - he made a mistake that cost him victory in Monaco and made another costly error in Montreal - in Haas's announcement.
"I'm really excited to sign such a young, amazing talent like Rafael Camara," Komatsu said.
"I don't need to tell everyone about his achievements in the junior formulas, it's been very impressive, and in his rookie season in Formula 2, the speed he's shown in some very difficult moments, like qualifying in Monaco and Montreal - that all goes to show the potential Rafa has.
"He showed when we had him drive in our TPC programme in Portugal that he could handle himself very well [and] with not a huge amount of time to learn the car, he showed us more than just raw speed.
"Rafa managed to create an environment to get the best out of himself, it was very impressive and certainly the laps he completed were special."
Camara has been a member of the Ferrari driver academy since he was in karting in 2021, and will graduate to F1 as its most decorated junior driver ever.
Should Camara win a third consecutive (main season) junior single-seater title, he'll be the first since Oscar Piastri won FREC-F3-F2 in 2019-21.
Camara said he was "very happy" to be joining Haas and thanked Komatsu and Haas F1 team owner Gene Haas for the trust they had placed in him.
"I'm also very grateful to the Scuderia Ferrari driver academy for their support and for everything they have contributed to my development over the years, as well as to my family for always being there throughout this journey," Camara said.
"Now my focus is on preparing myself in the best possible way for this new challenge. There will be a lot to learn, and I'm looking forward to working closely with the team, understanding the car and continuing to develop as a driver."
There is no official confirmation, but Bearman is expected to be retained and form an all-Ferrari-junior line-up alongside Camara.
Komatsu has repeatedly affirmed that those Ferrari links have not influenced Haas's 2026 driver line-up and Camara has been chosen completely on merit.