Haas have announced Pietro Fittipaldi will remain at the team for a fifth year in a development role.
He joined Haas as a test driver at the end of 2018 and was promoted to the reserve driver role in 2020.
That year he raced in the Sakhir and Abu Dhabi grands prix for the team as a substitute for the injured Romain Grosjean. Fittipaldi finished 17th and 19th respectively in his two appearances.
As he has not made any F1 starts since, the 26-year-old is still eligible to appear for Haas as a junior driver in the two practice sessions teams teams must set aside to run inexperienced racers in place of their usual pairing.
“I’m very happy to be continuing with the Haas F1 Team, a team that I consider family,” said Fittipaldi, the grandson of two-times F1 world champion Emerson
“It will be my fifth season in F1 as the official reserve and test driver for Haas and I’m super-excited to be going into 2023 coming off the back of a very competitive season.
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“Last year I did two free practice sessions, tested at the beginning of the year and at the end-of-season test so we’ve already been able to try some stuff for the new season. I’m excited to see the new car and new developments, and I hope that we’re able to make an even bigger step forward with the [2023 car, the Haas] VF-23.”
Haas is the only team which is yet to announce its launch plans for the 2023 season.
Although there have been no guarantee from Haas that Fittipaldi will get F1 seat time with them this year, they did state he will “play an operational role on-track throughout the season” in addition to being called up to “support the team with commercial and digital duties off-track”.
Fittipaldi will participate in the LMP2 prototype sports car class of IMSA, with Rick Ware Racing, and the World Endurance Championship, with Jota Sport, this year. He will therefore not be available to Haas as reserve driver for the Saudi Arabian, Azerbaijan, British, Hungarian, Dutch, Singapore and Brazilian grands prix.
In previous years, Fittipaldi has combined his Haas duties with racing in the DTM, IndyCar, the European Le Mans Series and Stock Car Brasil.
View the current list of 2023 F1 drivers and teams
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2023 F1 season
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