Esteban Gutierrez believes it was interesting getting a feel for the new updates on the VF-16 on the opening day of practice for the Singapore Grand Prix.
The Haas F1 Team driver finished the morning session in tenth, with a time of 1:48.109, and unlike team-mate Romain Grosjean, the Mexican experienced no problems with his car. With everyone improving in Free Practice 2, Gutierrez was unable to keep his morning position, finishing the session in thirteenth but improving by 1.382 seconds.
With Grosjean not participating in the first practice session, Haas have mainly got the data from Gutierrez, and they will focus on this data so they can make the best of it on Saturday for Free Practice 3 and Qualifying.
“It was quite an interesting day,” said Gutierrez. “We brought some updates and it was very interesting to get a feeling from them.
“We were exploring the package, and at the beginning it’s hard to judge – you really need to run it and try to adapt as best as possible. It’s unfortunate that Romain’s car wasn’t able to run.
“Obviously, having two sets of data to analyze is more important. We have plenty to look at though, and we’ll focus on that tonight and make the best of tomorrow.”
