Haas choose Camara, dash hopes of Doohan return

Brazilian Rafael Camara is to race for Haas next season on a multi-year deal, with the US-owned Formula One team saying on Thursday he was clearly the quickest in a shoot-out test for the seat.

The 21-year-old Ferrari Academy driver leads the Formula Two standings with two rounds remaining, after winning the F3 title last year.

He would be the second Brazilian on the starting grid, with Gabriel Bortoleto already racing for Audi, and plans to take the number 50 since his compatriot races with the 5 that would have been his first choice as a driver born on May 5, 2005.

Haas driver Esteban Ocon of France walks for the drivers’ parade before the Singapore Formula One Grand Prix race in Singapore on Sunday last week.

Photo: AP

Camara replaces Frenchman Esteban Ocon, whose departure was announced last month, at the Ferrari-powered team. Britain’s Oliver Bearman, who also came through the Ferrari Academy, is yet to be confirmed but sure to stay as the more experienced team leader.

The signing dashed the immediate hopes of Australian Jack Doohan, the reserve who had been hoping for a return to a full-time race seat after a split from Renault-owned Alpine last year.

“He [Camara] was the quickest, very simple answer. He was impressive,” Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu told reporters on a video call when asked what had decided the choice.

Komatsu said Doohan’s future with the team was “still up in the air,” but the door remained open for him to continue in his current role.

“We’ve been talking with him and his manager to see if we can do something together beyond this year,” he added.

Camara, a former teammate of Mercedes’ 20-year-old Formula One championship leader Kimi Antonelli in the FRECA European junior series, showed his pace when he drove last year’s Haas in a Testing of Previous Cars outing in Portugal at the Algarve Circuit in August.

“He showed... that he could handle himself very well with not a huge amount of time to learn the car, he showed us more than just raw speed,” Komatsu said. “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,” he added.

The Recife-born Brazilian, who leads Red Bull-backed Bulgarian Nikola Tsolov by seven points in the F2 standings, said his first reaction when Komatsu called to say he had the job was to reply: “are you sure?”

“I’m extremely happy, especially for my parents,” he said. “It was a lot of sacrifice on their side. We are not even from the motorsports world, we didn’t really know exactly what was the way to go and to be here.”

“We moved from Recife to Sao Paulo and then eventually they were always travelling with me. So their life, the normal life that they had, they couldn’t be doing any more,” he added.

Camara revealed that his grandmother had raced with a DKW Vemag in the 1960s, but said that was not the reason he had started.

Instead the adventure began when the son of a work colleague of his father began karting and his brother then also got the chance, but proved reluctant and eventually stopped.

“I was always the one that was following and wanting to go but I was still too young, I was five,” said Camara, who has the late triple champion Ayrton Senna as his racing hero. “When I was six I kept asking my dad... and it became something a bit more serious now.”

Haas are seventh of 11 teams ahead of next week’s US Grand Prix in Austin, Texas. Bearman has scored 23 of their 30 points.