Esteban Gutierrez will start his final race with the Haas F1 Team from thirteenth on the grid after a tricky day at the Yas Marina Circuit on Saturday.
The Mexican admitted it was tricky to work out how the car would behave during the qualifying session in Abu Dhabi with conditions being much different to what everyone experienced during final practice earlier in the day, but Gutierrez did well to out-qualify team-mate Romain Grosjean by 0.084 seconds.
Gutierrez will step aside from the Haas drive in favour of Kevin Magnussen for 2017, but the Mexican is determined to end the year on a high and perhaps breakthrough into the top ten for the first time this season.
“It’s been quite a tricky day, starting with FP3 conditions where it was pretty hot,” said Gutierrez. “Obviously, it was important to understand how the conditions would change the balance of the car going into qualifying with it going into the night and temperatures dropping.
“I feel very grateful to have achieved this result for my team. My group of mechanics and engineers having been giving it their best efforts even though it’s quite an emotional weekend for all of us being our last race together.
“They deserve to have my best, and I’ll give them the best of my focus, attitude and performance.”
