Esteban Gutierrez believes Haas F1 Team can be optimistic for the Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday.
The Mexican will start the Grand Prix at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace in twelfth. With team-mate Romain Grosjean also progressing to Q2, this marked the fifteenth time the team advanced both cars to the second round of qualifying. This was a good session for Gutierrez, especially as for the Mexican Grand Prix two weeks ago, he didn’t progress to Q2, starting in seventeenth.
With a time of 1:12.431, Gutierrez split the two Williams Martini Racing drivers and will start behind Valtteri Bottas but ahead of Felipe Massa. It was a competitive qualifying session, as Grosjean set a time just under a tenth of a second ahead of Gutierrez but will start in seventh.
Gutierrez believes it is great that the team’s performance is back after two weekends of struggling.
“It’s been quite a competitive qualifying session with the lap times being very close,” said Gutierrez. “We just missed out on Q3.
“It’s great that our performance is back after two weekends where we were struggling. We can now be optimistic for the race tomorrow. I’ll be aiming for the points. We’re aware of what we need to do and that’s what I’ll be targeting.”
