Esteban Gutierrez has revealed he was feeling under the weather during the Canadian Grand Prix, with the Haas driver enduring a fever, a headache as well as stomach aches.
Having out qualified his team-mate Romain Grosjean for the second time in a row, Gutierrez also managed to finish ahead of him in the race, though the pair was two laps behind winner Lewis Hamilton in 13th and 14th.
“It was not easy it was a very tough race for me, I’ve not been feeling very well, it was painful,” Gutierrez said. “I have the cold, fever, headache, then in the race I had a lot of stomach aches, every braking was… f*ck… Yeah it was really bad, was not really enjoying the race so much.”
Gutierrez’s health woes were not the only setback the Mexican had to deal with, as Haas struggled to exploit their Pirelli tyres in cold weather.
“I got to the end, to be honest we were not really in a position to fight with these types of weather conditions,” he added. “We are still missing some tools to compensate the low temperatures and make the tyres work. It’s not that we have degradation, it’s just that the tyres are not in the working window and that’s something we need to focus on.”
However, Gutierrez, who has yet to score any point this year, remains confident the American outfit can turn things around as it continues to learn more about the intricacies of F1.
“We are working hard for it. It’s not easy. Being a new team things come a bit slower. But the team is pushing hard for it and hopefully we’re not going to have many races with this type of temperature because every time we have this type of temperature we are not performing as much as we would like.”
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