Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsHaas F1 Team

Unlikely Haas will be at 100% for Melbourne - Gutierrez

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Esteban Gutierrez has warned not to expect Haas to be operating at 100% by the Australian Grand Prix.

Haas enjoyed an impressive first pre-season test in its history last week as the team managed more mileage than both McLaren and Manor, even getting in a race simulation on the final day. While hoping for my progress during the second test this week, Gutierrez says it is unlikely the team will feel fully prepared by the time the first race comes around.

A closer look at the Haas VF-16

"It is quite ambitious to say 100%!" Gutierrez said. "You have a lot of teams on the grid so many years behind them I would not say 100%, it will take us some time.

"I see that is our biggest challenge really get the team well integrated, working efficiently but everybody has a great attitude, great atmosphere. That we have a good base to follow to the next steps."

And Gutierrez says Haas should be able to exceed last week's mileage and work on finding out the car's true performance during the second test.

"We can expect to be more solid. We need to be if we want to do the next step. I think we will naturally be after the experience of [the first test]. We will try to explore the car more, do more performance work, more on the set-up side, once we have solved all the reliability issues which fortunately are not big ones and are easy to fix."

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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.