Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHaas F1 Team

Gutierrez 'very hungry' for race return

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Esteban Gutierrez says he is "very hungry" to get back to racing with Haas after a year as Ferrari's reserve driver.

After two years with Sauber, Gutierrez lost his race seat but moved to Ferrari in 2015 as the team's reserve to Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen. With Ferrari entering in to a technical partnership with Haas, the Mexican driver was an obvious choice for a race seat and says he is raring to go in 2016.

“I feel very excited after a complete season as a reserve driver," Gutierrez said. "I am full of energy, full of ideas and very hungry to race. The development of our car from the beginning will be crucial in order to start the season confident that we have done our job as a team to prepare in the best way possible.”

Haas will make its public debut at the first test next week and Gutierrez says the team needs to ensure it learns as much as possible from the eight days of track time before the Australian Grand Prix weekend.

“We expect to run the car as many laps as possible. This will be our priority, as we need to be sure to sort all the possible issues we may have in order to fix them on time. It will be very interesting to develop our car setup through the tests in preparation ahead of the first race.

"I am sure we will have plenty of work to do. At the same time, the most important thing will be to always stay together as a team in order to be very efficient with our progress.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.