Gutierrez expects "reasonable step" from Haas updates

The changes are targeted at improving the car's performance under braking and in slow corners, which has been a weakness of the package thus far.

"We have some new aerodynamic parts at the back of the car, some at the front, which still need to be evaluated," said the Mexican. "The most important one is the one at the rear.

"The target is to attack the weaknesses of the car, mainly at the end of braking and turning into the corner. This will give us, if things work as they should, more confidence to extract much more from the car.

"So it's a really good thing to have. We have the upgraded engine from Monza, the team is pushing hard on those areas, they've really improved the weaknesses. I think if everything works as expected, it should give us a reasonable step."

Gutierrez stressed that there was much to be gained under braking: "I think it's the area where you can gain most of the time, on braking, and on slow speed corners, and how much speed you can enter with. And then that dictates how the car is going to behave in the middle of the corner.

"If you improve the first part of the corner, then obviously then you have much more stability, and you can go through the corner with more confidence, and be more consistent. I think it's mainly related to that. Let's hope that these things will improve that area."

Gutierrez said that both he and the team learned a lot at Monza, where in low downforce spec he qualified 10th.

"Monza was fantastic. When you have a car which you have driven all season, and you have let's say improved the set-up in many areas, and you understand the car better, but then you arrive in Monza and you take all the downforce away from the car, and then the real weaknesses come up.

"So for me together with my engineers it was very interesting to feel that from practice one, and then attack and try to improve only with the set-up of the car, not really with any updates or anything, to improve that area.

"It's fantastic to know that with the low downforce set-up of the car we were able to improve it during the weekend. And now that we have an update that is focussed on that, it gives us a lot of confidence that things are coming on the way.

"Obviously there are so many variables that you cannot guarantee that will be the case, you have to test it on track. The car may behave differently, it may require some set-up adjustments to rebalance the car again. We are quite confident that we will make it work."