Autosportfoto

F1 Abu Dhabi GP: Gutierrez reflects on Haas ‘challenges’ ahead of team exit

Esteban Gutierrez says he will take positives away from his season with Haas despite failing to secure an extended stay into the 2017 season with the team.

The former Sauber driver returned to F1 with the incoming Haas team this year but despite proving a fair match to more experienced team-mate Romain Grosjean in terms of pace, this has not been reflected in otherwise disappointin race results.

Yet to score a point his season - compared with Grosjean's tally of 29 points -, Gutierrez will be making his final appearance for Haas at this weekend's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, to be replaced by Kevin Magnussen.

Despite the brief spell, Gutierrez - whose 2017 plans remain undecided - says he has benefited from the 'challenges' of competing with F1's first all-new team entry in six years.

"It's been a very nice experience, but with a lot of challenges," he said. "There were some very difficult days for the mechanics, working day and night for quite a lot of time, the engineers as well. Being a new team, you don't have a lot of people that you can really rotate, so it was quite a challenge for everybody, but also for myself."

"I would've liked results to be better, but the fact of building a new team was definitely something special - something you don't really get to live very often in life. We built up something from scratch."

Zdroj: crash.net