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Haas F1 Team just missed a point-scoring result Sunday in the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Barcelona – Catalunya as Esteban Gutiérrez drove his VF-16 from 18th-place on the grid to finish 11th, one spot out of the points.

Teammate, Romain Grosjean, endured a difficult race, as he was forced to retire with brake problems 10 laps short of the checkered flag.

Winning the race was Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

It was his first Formula One victory, and at age 18 he becomes the series’ youngest race winner, as well as the youngest race leader, youngest points scorer and youngest to be on the podium. Verstappen earned the accolades, starting fourth and beating 2007 Formula One champion Kimi Raikkonen to the stripe by .616 of a second.

Gutiérrez’s 11th-place effort was his best of the season. Utilizing a two-stop strategy, Gutiérrez began the 66-lap race around the 4.655-kilometer (2.892-mile), 16-turn circuit on the Pirelli P Zero Yellow soft tire. He pitted on lap 15 for another set of softs and after pit stops had cycled through, was up to 15th.

“It was a very tricky weekend for us,” Gutierrez said, “which started with a few problems in FP2 (Free Practice 2) on Friday. However, the team did a great job in recovering. In the race, I was doing my best from the beginning to the end. I think we could have done a bit better with the tires – maybe taken a bit of a longer stint with the softs as toward the end of the race I just ran out of tires. However, it was really enjoyable out there and I had some great battles throughout. Today wasn’t straightforward for us to finish in the points, but we’re finding more consistency in the car, which will give us more opportunity to go forward.”

Haas team principal Guenther Steiner said, “It was a very eventful race for us with both our drivers. We had a problem with the front wing for Romain. We changed it, obviously, but then we had to retire him as he had a brake issue. Esteban did a good job. I think in the end he ran out of tires. There was no grip anymore – they’d gone off the cliff. He fought the whole race. We got him to 11th – almost a point – but we just didn’t get it. It shows we are there when we need to be there. All in all, it was our most difficult race and our most eventful race of the year. It’s part of the game. It doesn’t always go perfectly.”

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