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Haas giving Gutierrez every chance to score - Steiner

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner wants Esteban Gutierrez to end his stint with the team by scoring points, and says the Mexican is being given every chance to do so.

Gutierrez outqualified team-mate Romain Grosjean for today’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, ending a competitive season in terms of qualifying performances. However, Gutierrez will be replaced by Kevin Magnussen in 2017 having failed to score a point so far this year - compared to 29 for Grosjean - and Steiner says he wants to see the outgoing driver sign off with points.

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Asked if he has spoken to Gutierrez about the reasons he has been replaced yet, Steiner replied: “No, not yet.

“There’s no point. He needs to focus on the race, because what I would like is that he goes out of our team with points, that’s the aim. Let’s keep him focused, he knows he did a good qualifying, so we are still in a good position to score points with him. I hope that he achieves it and we will do the utmost to get it done - everyone in the team - because he deserves it.”

And Steiner says he has been pleased with the response from Gutierrez so far this weekend, with Haas giving him every opportunity to finish the season on a high.

“For sure he’s not happy but he did his job, as a professional should do. That’s what we expect, but I didn’t expect anything else from him to be honest. In the end he’s a professional - except when he had his tantrum with me last weekend in Brazil - but otherwise he came in here, he was focused, he did his job, he did a good qualifying.

“And that’s why I said before, I hope he scores points because that’s the best way for him to show that he should stay [in F1], that he should have a space here.

“We are not putting any favouritism in place. He outqualified Romain, that shows his car is the same as the other one. He even got a new engine here, a fifth engine, so what more can we do?”

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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.