Those are traits that Camara has shown throughout his junior career. On his F3 debut in Melbourne, Australia, he posted the fastest lap on his second push lap in practice, despite never having driven the track before, and then went on to take pole. To be able to commit to a lap in reasonably unfamiliar machinery on a reasonably unfamiliar track was becoming his bread and butter.
“I think I have always been able to extract the most of myself,” he says. “These days were really just trying to apply everything that I learned in the years in my single-seater career. Everything that I knew, it’s just about putting it in place and making sure I was doing my job.”
Camara has made the most of his opportunities. He admits that he was a “bit scared” when he joined the Ferrari junior programme and that he had to work hard to improve his English to in turn improve the way he communicated with the team.
But he threw himself into the challenge and, as a result, he feels like he was “able to learn a lot” and “to grow up not only as a driver but as a person as well” with Ferrari.
Having seen the likes of Charles Leclerc and Ollie Bearman progress from Ferrari juniors to Formula 1 drivers in recent times was also inspiring because he knew that, if he delivered on expectation, there was a strong chance he would get to follow in their footsteps.
Once Komatsu gave him the good news, he told his parents. “I didn’t know how to say it to them so I just said quickly – I’ll be driving next year,” he says laughing. “My dad, he was more emotional. When he came to hug me, it was just… you cannot hold [the emotion], it just comes out.”
When he arrives in Formula 1, he’ll have some familiar faces around. He’s known fellow Brazilian Gabriel Bortoleto since he was a kid, racing him in go-karts along with Kimi Antonelli, Isack Hadjar and Arvid Lindblad.
“I have known Gabi since I was seven,” he says. “We raced together in Brazil. Then in Europe he was always in the category above but we’ve always been together.
“We have been very close friends. To see him going [to F1]… for me it was another motivation to keep working and keep pushing so hopefully it would be two of us there – and it will be next year.”
For now, though, Camara is resetting his focus to F2 and the final two rounds of the year. He leads Red Bull junior Nikola Tsolov by seven points but if he can fend off the Bulgarian, he’ll follow in the footsteps of the likes of Bortoleto, Oscar Piastri, George Russell and Leclerc in winning F3 and F2 back-to-back before ultimately making it into Formula 1.
“The aim is to finish on a high,” he says. Once that’s done and dusted he can switch his attention to the Haas project, with a run in the end-of-season young driver test planned ahead of an intense winter.
“There’s a lot of things we need to speak about and organise,” he says. “I’ll just be waiting for them to tell me what to do – and I’ll be ready.”
