Haas promises Gutierrez swift answer on 2017 plans

Gutierrez’s contract with the team runs out at the end of this season, and his place at the outfit is in doubt after a frustrating campaign in which he has failed to score any points so far.

Speaking ahead of his home race, Gutierrez said that he was impatient for an answer from Haas about its 2017 plans because he did not want to risk losing chances he has elsewhere.

“Fortunately, we have other options, which we are now considering strongly, and I think it will be important to close something soon, because we cannot risk to just wait a few more races until the end of the season and risk to fall in between two chairs,” he said.

While Haas made use of the Mexican GP last year to confirm Gutierrez for 2016, team principal Gunther Steiner insisted that nothing was decided yet about who would be Romain Grosjean’s teammate in 2017.

“We will tell him in the next two to three weeks what we are doing, because the season is nearly at end anyway,” Steiner said.

“I don’t want to speculate on it this weekend, I want to focus on the racing – and also he should focus on doing the best he can. Last weekend he qualified well and then in the race had the issue with the brakes – so this weekend we need to focus on the racing and not speculate about who is doing what.”

He added: “We have not made any decision yet. I would rather that everybody concentrates on racing this weekend, especially him, and see what comes out.

“I think we know pretty well what other people are doing. There is not so much going on at the moment. But that is not the big factor.”