The brief

  • What happened: Leonardo Fornaroli — McLaren’s reserve driver and the reigning Formula 2 champion — completed a two-day Testing of Previous Cars (TPC) run in Haas’s 2025 VF-25 at Jerez on June 17–18. Haas reserve Ryo Hirakawa, fresh from a podium at Le Mans, shared the running.
  • Why it matters: It is a McLaren junior turning laps for a rival, and a clear signal that with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri locked in long-term, Fornaroli’s quickest path to the grid runs through someone else’s car. Haas, still weighing its 2027 line-up, gets a low-cost look at one of the most decorated juniors on the market.
  • What to watch: Haas’s 2027 driver call — Esteban Ocon’s seat is the one in question — and whether McLaren parks Fornaroli at another team to keep him race-ready while it has no vacancy of its own.

Fast context

Fornaroli, 21, is one of the few drivers to win Formula 3 and Formula 2 in back-to-back seasons, taking the 2024 F3 crown and then the 2025 F2 title. That run earned him a McLaren reserve and development role for 2026. A week before Jerez he made his first Formula 1 session start, driving in FP1 at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona and ending the hour fifth, only around six-tenths off team-mate Piastri.

The Jerez outing was a different kind of opportunity. TPC programs let teams run two-year-old machinery for mileage and driver development, and the VF-25 gave Fornaroli a proper stint in current-generation F1 hardware he would not otherwise get near. It is worth noting Haas runs Ferrari power and is not a McLaren engine customer, so this is less a straightforward loan than both camps, in McLaren’s words, “exploring opportunities.”

That is the heart of the story. McLaren has the most settled front line on the grid and no seat to offer in the near term, so team principal Andrea Stella has been candid about looking outward: “Leonardo is definitely an asset for Formula 1 and we want him to drive… we are working together to explore every opportunity that may arise in Formula 1.” Haas — with Ocon’s future uncertain and a recent habit of handing juniors like Oliver Bearman early chances — is a logical place for one of those opportunities to land.

What changes next

The next checkpoint is Haas’s 2027 line-up decision and whether Fornaroli converts the Jerez mileage into more FP1 runs or further private tests. For a driver who has won everything beneath F1, the open question is no longer pace — it is finding a cockpit, and Jerez was the first concrete sign of where one might come from.