Gutierrez: Haas 'progressing very, very quickly'

Esteban Gutierrez says Haas is "progressing very, very quickly" after its first four races as an F1 team.

Haas endured a difficult pre-season - most notably during the second test - but bounced back with an impressive sixth place in Australia and fifth in Bahrain to start the season. While China was a tough weekend for the team, there was another good race in Russia where Romain Grosjean again finished in the points.

While Gutierrez has yet to enjoy the results himself, he says he can see the difference between the team now compared to the way Haas was working in pre-season.

“The biggest difference is how the team is working together," Gutierrez said. "Race by race I feel the team is progressing very, very quickly. We’ve taken advantage of the things we’ve done well and when things haven’t gone as well, we’ve adapted and learned quickly.”

And Gutierrez says this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix - on the Barcelona circuit which was used during pre-season testing - will provide Haas with a clear comparison of how far it has come in a short space of time.

“I believe that it will be very positive for the team to make a proper comparison from where we started on testing, as we have a pretty good reference from that, and also where we are right now. It will be good to see how far we’ve progressed and it will also allow us to understand the car better. I think that will be a very important step.”

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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.