- Haas has signed Rafael Camara, a 21 year old Brazilian who races in prescription contact lenses to correct nearsightedness and astigmatism, to a multi year Formula 1 contract starting in 2027.
- Camara called his parents the moment the deal closed and said his father’s reaction, a hug that brought out real emotion, meant more to him than anything the contract itself could offer.
- He will replace Esteban Ocon at Haas and arrives on the grid alongside childhood friend Gabriel Bortoleto, a fellow Brazilian he has raced against from the age of seven onward.
A phone call home that said more than the contract did
Rafael Camara did not plan out how he would tell his parents. The 21 year old Brazilian had just finished the most intense two days of his career, a shootout test for Haas that would decide whether he had a Formula 1 seat for 2027, and once the team told him the car was his, he picked up the phone and blurted it out before he could compose anything more formal. “I think I told them pretty quickly that I would be driving next year,” he said, laughing at how little ceremony he gave a moment he had worked toward his entire life. His father’s response needed no polish. “My dad, he was more emotional,” Camara said of the hug that followed. For a driver who had spent years treating composure as part of the job, it was the one reaction he could not plan for and did not try to control.
Haas confirmed the deal in mid October, a multi year contract that puts Camara on the 2027 grid as Esteban Ocon’s replacement. Team principal Ayao Komatsu said Camara adapted to the car fast across his testing programme, and team owner Gene Haas pointed to the preparation behind him, saying young drivers out of the Ferrari Driver Academy, including current Haas driver Oliver Bearman, are well prepared and can make an impact right away. Camara put it more simply. “It’s just really crazy to achieve this,” he said. “I cannot be happier right now.”
Racing a sport built on sharp eyesight with blurred vision of his own
What makes Camara’s rise unusual has nothing to do with lap times. He is nearsighted, carrying prescriptions of 2.75 and 2.50 in each eye along with astigmatism, a combination that would leave him unable to pick out an approaching corner at racing speed without correction. Standard contact lenses fix the problem fully behind the visor, and Camara has never treated it as an obstacle worth discussing much. Jacques Villeneuve won an entire Formula 1 world championship in 1997 wearing glasses under his helmet, proof that the sport has never actually demanded perfect natural vision, only a driver’s willingness to solve the problem and move on. Camara solved his before most fans ever learned it existed.
The bigger story of how he got here runs through nearly every rung of the junior ladder. He won multiple karting titles before the Ferrari Driver Academy picked him up at the end of 2021, a jump that came with its own adjustment beyond the cockpit. “I was a bit scared,” he said of joining the programme, admitting he had to work on his English just to communicate properly with new engineers and teammates. He credits Ferrari with helping him grow as a driver and as a person in equal measure, a claim that reads as more than a talking point once you track the results that followed it.
Climbing every rung of the ladder without a season to spare
The results themselves are hard to argue with. He split his first full season across three Formula 4 championships in 2022, finishing second in the UAE series and third in both the Italian and ADAC championships. By 2023 he had moved up to finish third in the Formula Regional Middle East Championship and fifth in Europe’s FRECA series, then returned in 2024 to finish third again in the Middle East before winning the FRECA title outright. Formula 3 came next, and Camara won that championship as a rookie in 2025 driving for Trident, taking four wins and five pole positions in a single season.
This year he moved up again, to Formula 2 as a rookie with Invicta Racing, and he currently leads the standings with 207 points, seven clear of Nikola Tsolov, built on six podiums and main race wins in Spain, Belgium, and Azerbaijan. Win the title from here and Camara becomes the only driver ever to claim FRECA, Formula 3, and Formula 2 championships in three straight seasons, a run of back to back titles that junior category veterans say almost never happens once the competition tightens at each higher step. “I think I have always been able to extract the most of myself,” Camara said, a quiet way of describing a streak that speaks loudly enough on its own.
A grid that already has his oldest friend waiting
Camara will not arrive on the 2027 grid as a stranger to Formula 1’s Brazilian contingent. He has known Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto, now racing in F1 after his own F2 title run, from the time both were seven years old, a friendship that predates both of their junior racing careers by years. Camara does not describe the relationship as simple nostalgia. He said watching Bortoleto reach Formula 1 pushed him to keep working so the two of them could race on the same grid rather than watch each other’s careers from opposite sides of a television screen.
That motivation shows up in how Camara talks about the shootout test itself, two days in Portimao he knew would not come around a second time. “For sure it was an intense two days,” he said. “You have two days to make sure you are comfortable and you deliver what you need to deliver.” He admitted to worrying about tensing up and failing to drive like himself under that kind of pressure, so he made a point of reminding himself to enjoy the opportunity rather than letting nerves swallow it. Whatever he told himself worked. Haas walked away convinced, and Komatsu’s praise for how quickly he adapted suggests the test looked just as smooth from the garage as Camara makes it sound in hindsight.
What comes next for Formula 1’s newest signing
Camara’s immediate focus stays on the two F2 rounds left this season, where his seven point lead over Tsolov is not yet safe, though the Qatar and Abu Dhabi rounds remain uncertain amid regional issues affecting the calendar. “The aim is to finish on a high,” he said, treating the championship fight as unfinished business rather than a formality now that Haas has already locked in his future. He will partner Bearman at Haas next year, pairing two Ferrari Academy products who are already discussed as possible long term successors to Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari itself, a storyline that will follow both drivers long before either sits in a Ferrari cockpit.
For now, Camara says he is content to let Haas set the schedule for his rookie testing and preparation rather than push his own timeline. “I’ll just be waiting for them to tell me what to do, and I’ll be ready,” he said. It is the same even keeled approach that got him through a shootout test, a vision correction most fans never noticed, and a phone call home that mattered more to his father than it did to him. Three Formula championships, one unexpected hurdle, and a childhood friendship that outran them both: that is the shortest version of how a 21 year old from Brazil ended up on a Formula 1 grid in 2027.
Sources:
- GPFans: Who is Rafael Camara? F1’s newest star overcame eyesight issues to make the 2027 grid
- Formula1.com: Camara on joining Haas in 2027 and the intense shoot out test he faced
- ESPN: Ferrari protege Rafael Camara completes Haas driver line up for F1 2027
- GPFans: F1 2027 grid with Ferrari prodigy confirmed and three seats still open
