Romain Grosjean believes he is in a good position to take a seat at Ferrari next year should one become available, but says nobody knows how the grid will line up in 2018.
When the Frenchman joined Haas at the start of last season, it was widely viewed as a stepping stone to joining Ferrari with the American team entering F1 with an engine and technical partnership with the Scuderia.
Neither of Ferrari's current drivers Sebastian Vettel or Kimi Raikkonen are contracted for 2018 with rumours once again emerging that the latter will be dropped at the end of this season.
Asked by Sky F1's Simon Lazenby if he felt he was first in line for a seat at Ferrari, Grosjean replied: "Good question, I don't know. Life is full of surprises.
"If you ask Valtteri what he was doing last December, I'm sure he was thinking 'I'm going to go again with Williams' and the next thing you know he's in a world championship car.
"It's a phone call and the best thing you can do is do the best thing on track."
In December 2015, Grosjean revealed to Sky F1 that he was learning how to speak Italian as he bid to make his "dream" of driving for Ferrari come true.
Pressed by Lazenby about whether there was any contact between his representatives and Ferrari, Grosjean continued: "It's early days and we are not even in July. Who knows what the F1 grid is going to be like next year.
"Valtteri is waiting on Mercedes, and there is the Kimi situation, what is he going to do? Everyone has thought he is going to be out of Formula 1 since 2010 and here we are in 2017, he's 37 and still here doing a decent job.
"If there is an opportunity, a seat with them then I believe I am in a good position but it doesn't necessarily mean anything."
Grosjean has yet to win a race in his F1 career while his best result with Haas is a fifth-place finish at last year's Bahrain GP.
He has collected 10 points so far this season and while he is frustrated with not challenging at the front end of the field, Grosjean believes Haas are making progress after a tough debut campaign.
"I'm frustrated sometimes because I love winning and that's what matters to me in Formula 1," he said.
"You come from other categories where you've won everything and then you come to F1 and you don't get the chance to win a race because it's like you are starting a 100m race 10 seconds behind the others.
"But it's great to see how we can start from zero as a new team and we can build and surprise a lot of people. Everyone was saying 'Haas are coming to F1, they've got four years full-time in the wind tunnel, they're going to be great' and then last year we struggled a little bit.
"That's normal for F1. The whole process was to prepare for 2017 and we're already looking at 2018 and improving every year.
"The year started well. Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull have the front six places already locked so the race kind of starts from P7 onwards. Williams and Force India have been very fast recently so you have maybe one spot in the top 10 to try and score points so it's quite tricky."
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