With Haas F1’s racing debut set for 2016, team boss Gunther Steiner believes Ferrari test driver Esteban Gutierrez’s experience with the Scuderia will prove to be extremely valuable.
Gutierrez was recently revealed to be Haas F1’s second driver along side current Lotus man Romain Grosjean, who will leave his current team after this season. However, it’s Gutierrez’s experience that might be crucial for Haas, especially considering the technical partnership between the two teams.
“His knowledge of Ferrari helps us a lot,” said Steiner in a recent interview. “As everybody knows we are new, so we need to bring over the processes and procedures from Ferrari, and we need a good team to establish that. Working with somebody who has been in the simulator at Ferrari, who knows their processes and how the software works – which he is used to as he has used their car, with the software to map our car very similar – that can only be good for us.”
Of course, Gutierrez has raced in Formula 1 before, with Sauber from 2013 to 2014, while in 2012 and 2011 he was a test driver for the team. His best season was 2013 when he once registered a fastest lap of the race and also secured 6 points at the end of the year, ahead of the Williams-Renault duo of Valtteri Bottas and Pastor Maldonado.
One huge plus with Gutierrez is the fact that he is still very young at 24 years old, with more experience in Formula 1 than a lot of the drivers on the grid this year. Steiner is aware that perhaps the young Mexican wasn’t ready for F1 when he first arrived on the scene, but now thinks that Gutierrez has matured a lot.
“He can be quick. He was quick in GP3 en route to winning the championship, and at Sauber, it’s difficult to assess, in looking back, as to how quick he was. I don’t know, but he wasn’t slow,” added the former Red Bull technical director.
Gutierrez was officially announced as a Haas F1 driver on October 30th, during the Mexican Grand Prix weekend.
Story references: autosport
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