Haas Weighs Its Toyota Partnership Against an All-Ferrari Driver Line-Up

Haas has addressed how Toyota, its technical and commercial partner, views the prospect of the American team fielding two Ferrari-affiliated drivers, according to PlanetF1. The question has sharpened because Ferrari has promoted Dino Beganovic to its Formula 1 reserve role after seven seasons in its driver academy, as Crash.net reports. Together the two stories show a team trying to serve two powerful partners and a manufacturer deciding where its next wave of drivers will race.

Two partners, one pair of seats

Haas has always been a team built on borrowed strength. Since its debut in 2016 it has taken its power unit, gearbox and every part the regulations allow from Ferrari. That arrangement has always carried an expectation. Maranello’s young drivers get Friday mileage at Haas and, when they are ready, a race seat.

The list of Ferrari juniors who have passed through Kannapolis and Banbury is long. Charles Leclerc drove in practice sessions for Haas before his debut season with Sauber. Mick Schumacher raced for the team in 2021 and 2022. Oliver Bearman made two substitute appearances in 2024 before taking a full-time seat in 2025, and he is still there.

Toyota’s arrival in late 2024 added a different kind of partner. Toyota supplies no engine. What it brings is investment, engineering depth and facilities, plus a clear interest in giving its own people exposure to Formula 1. Ryo Hirakawa, a Toyota endurance racing driver, has already driven in practice sessions for the team. That gives Toyota a legitimate interest in who sits in the cars, even if its contract gives it no formal say.

The tension is simple to describe and hard to settle. Bearman is a Ferrari driver. Esteban Ocon, Haas’s other racer this season, is not tied to any manufacturer. Replacing Ocon with another Ferrari junior would hand both cars to Maranello’s programme just as Toyota’s stake in the team is at its largest. The fact that Haas has been drawn into discussing Toyota’s view in public tells you the scenario is being taken seriously.

Seventh place, seven points clear

All of this is happening while Haas fights a tight battle on track. After 17 rounds the team is seventh in the constructors’ championship with 30 points. That is seven ahead of Audi on 23 and 38 behind Alpine on 68. Six rounds remain, starting with the team’s home race, the United States Grand Prix in Austin on 25 October.

Singapore showed how fine the margins are. Bearman started 11th and finished 12th. Ocon started 12th and finished 13th, and both cars were lapped. Nico Hülkenberg, by contrast, took eighth for Audi from 10th on the grid. Those four points cut Haas’s lead over its nearest rival to a single good afternoon.

This matters for the driver question in two ways. Over the final six races, Haas needs two drivers who can turn marginal opportunities into points, and Ocon’s experience has value in exactly that kind of scrap. The final position also determines prize money. That money is precisely what makes Haas’s independence possible, and it is what gives the team any leverage in talks with either partner. A team that finishes seventh negotiates from a stronger position than one that slips to eighth.

Beganovic and the queue at Maranello

Beganovic’s promotion is a reward for persistence. The Swede joined the Ferrari Driver Academy in 2019, won the Formula Regional European Championship in 2022 and has since been racing in Formula 2. A permanent reserve role puts him in the simulator, at grands prix and on call if either race driver is unavailable. It also signals that Ferrari sees him as a credible Formula 1 prospect rather than one more academy graduate.

The harder question is where that leads. Ferrari’s own seats are not opening any time soon. Lewis Hamilton is third in the championship on 229 points and Leclerc is fifth on 215, and Ferrari is second in the constructors’ standings on 444. Leclerc is the team’s long-term cornerstone. Hamilton, at 41, is in the final phase of his career, but nothing suggests his seat is about to fall vacant. Bearman, meanwhile, is the obvious first in line for any opening.

That leaves Ferrari with more juniors than places to put them. Historically it relied on two outlets: Sauber, during its Alfa Romeo years, and Haas. Sauber has now become Audi’s works team, so that door is shut. Haas is effectively the only customer team where Ferrari’s influence still carries real weight. An all-Ferrari line-up there would be Maranello’s neatest way to keep its pipeline moving.

The contrast with Mercedes is hard to ignore. Andrea Kimi Antonelli leads the championship with 340 points and eight wins, 102 points clear of George Russell, his team-mate. Both came through Mercedes’ junior system. Russell spent three seasons at Williams before his promotion, while Antonelli went straight into the works team. Mercedes has built its title charge on drivers it developed itself. Ferrari’s current pairing combines one academy graduate, Leclerc, with Hamilton, who was signed from Mercedes, and Bearman is the only more recent academy product to hold a regular race seat. If Ferrari wants a similar homegrown succession, it needs somewhere to blood its prospects, and Haas is the natural candidate.

What Toyota is actually buying

Toyota’s previous Formula 1 venture, as a works team from 2002 to 2009, ended without a win despite enormous spending. The approach this time is deliberately incremental. Toyota is using Haas to train engineers, rebuild knowledge and keep its options open, without the cost and exposure of running its own team.

On that reading, Toyota does not need a race seat to get value from the deal. Its returns come through the engineering relationship, Friday running and simulator work. The Hirakawa outings fit that pattern.

Still, any manufacturer with a driver programme and a Japanese market to serve will eventually want a racer in the car. An all-Ferrari line-up would not end the partnership. It would, however, close that door for at least a season and make Haas look, from Tokyo, more like Ferrari’s satellite than Toyota’s partner. A team that relies on both companies cannot afford for either to feel like the junior party.

There is also a structural point. Ferrari’s influence over Haas’s driver choices comes from being the supplier of the car’s most expensive components. Toyota’s influence comes from investment the team uses to become less dependent on that supplier. Handing both seats to Ferrari would strengthen the very relationship Toyota’s money is meant to balance.

The case for keeping one seat independent

Our view is that an all-Ferrari pairing would be the convenient choice and the wrong one.

The convenience is real. Ferrari would be pleased and the relationship with Haas’s power-unit supplier would be smooth. A second junior arriving with academy backing would also cost the team less. But Haas’s best seasons have come when it fielded at least one experienced, independent racer who could lead development and collect points on difficult weekends. Ocon fills that role now, and on current form the team needs it.

Beganovic’s promotion also makes the rush harder to justify. As reserve driver, he is already embedded in Ferrari’s F1 operation and will gain experience in the simulator and around the paddock. Ferrari does not need to put him, or anyone else, in a Haas race seat immediately to protect its investment. Friday sessions at Haas can provide the track time without giving away a race seat.

The sensible structure is one Ferrari seat, one seat the team controls, and Friday running shared between Ferrari’s juniors and Toyota’s. That keeps both partners invested and preserves Ayao Komatsu’s flexibility as team principal. It also stops Haas from becoming a holding pen for another manufacturer’s drivers, which is what Sauber turned into during its Alfa Romeo era.

Austin will provide the first test. Haas goes to its home race seven points ahead of Audi, with the team’s backers, both partners and the driver-market chatter all close at hand. If Haas ends the season still seventh, it will have the standing to keep one seat as its own and tell Ferrari no. If it drops to eighth, that case gets much harder to make.