Haas yet to decide on Gutierrez future, will meet deadline

Haas has yet to decide on Esteban Gutierrez's future but team principal Guenther Steiner says it will do so in the coming weeks.

Gutierrez set a deadline of two weeks to decide his future at Haas, with the Mexican saying he is "considering strongly" offers from elsewhere. Asked for his opinion of Gutierrez's ultimatum, Steiner said the team would be making a decision in that timeframe as it wants to have its line-up sorted before the end of the year.

"In two weeks he will know!" Steiner said. "At the moment, no. If I count opinions we get into speculation and it isn’t right. We need to… we will tell him within the next two to three weeks what we are doing. The season is almost ended anyway."

However, Steiner says it's a topic he doesn't want Gutierrez focusing on in Mexico, having yet to score for Haas this season.

"I don’t really want to speculate on it this weekend. I want us to all focus on racing and also him to focus on doing the best he can this weekend. Last weekend again he qualified good and then in the race we had the issue with the brakes and he couldn’t show what he can do. So, my opinion, what we need to focus on this weekend is racing and not speculation about who is doing what."

With Gutierrez announced as a Haas driver in Mexico one year ago, Steiner admitted the lack of comment so far means the team has genuinely yet to make its mind up.

"We have not made any decisions - that is fair to say, yes. We have not made any decision yet. So that is why I say I would rather everybody concentrates on racing this weekend, especially him and see what is coming out."

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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.