The Haas F1 Team endured a tough first Mexican Grand Prix experience, with problems surfacing on both Haas VF-16‘s on Sunday.
Their struggles in practice on Friday, led to a disappointing qualifying performance, with neither driver reaching Q2. Esteban Gutierrez started in seventeenth and even though he jumped up to fourteenth, after the incident between Marcus Ericsson and Pascal Wehrlein, he finished in nineteenth.
The Mexican had to take care of the brakes, as they were struggling with the cooling of them. He was having to brake a lot earlier than he would have liked. Leading to a less than ideal situation when you’re trying to fight your way up the grid.
It was a similar Grand Prix for team-mate Romain Grosjean who started from the pit-lane, with the American team having to change the floor of the Frenchman’s car on the morning of the race, and FIA regulations required a pit-lane start for him.
Unlike Gutierrez, Grosjean was unable to climb up the grid, as he was experiencing lack of downforce. Along with the slippery track surface, Grosjean was unable to make a significant forward progress, and the Frenchman saw the chequered flag in twentieth, behind Gutierrez.
Team Principal Guenther Steiner confirmed it was a tough weekend for the team, although Sunday’s results at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez were not too unexpected for the team, after they saw it a difficult weekend coming on Friday.
“It was a tough day and a tough weekend for us,” said Steiner. “We started on the wrong foot and it ended how it ended. Sometimes you have to go through bad experiences like this to be able to learn from them. I hope this is our only bad weekend of the year. We’ve got two more races to go.
“We’ll get ourselves ready for those and get our spirits up again. We saw this coming on Friday, so today’s result is not too unexpected. A race like this just makes it a long day.”
