Haas hopes to tie up Magnussen deal this weekend

Magnussen and Haas have agreed to join forces for 2017, although nothing has yet been formally put down on paper.

Speaking in Brazil on Thursday, Haas team principal Gunther Steiner drew short of naming Magnussen but said that he was pushing for the outfit to be in a position to sort matters imminently.

When asked by Motorsport.com about when he expected to make an announcement, Steiner said: “I don’t know. Hopefully this weekend. Hopefully we announce something this weekend.

“There are still a few things we have to talk to people about and then we will announce who our driver will be.”

Pushed on what was holding up confirmation, Steiner said: “It is just the little work when you get close to a deal. It is the same when you buy a car. In the end you want a free carpet or something new. We are at that stage at the moment.”

Steiner said that having the right driver line-up was important for his team as it aimed to make solid progress in 2017 after a mixed campaign this year.

“We are quite a young team and the confidence level in us, somebody needs to understand it and want to be with us,” he said.

“We dipped a little bit and we have ups and downs, and we need to sort them out. Not everyone wants to come but we wanted to speak to get the best we could get. That is what you always want to do if you want to grow a team, and genuinely we want to get better. This is the message, as well, we want to send to the racing world.

“There is more than one reason why you change a driver: Is it money? Is it you want to do better? There are so many reasons. It is not easy.

“We are in quite a unique spot at the moment where some want to come, some don’t want to come. It is fairly difficult to do it – and therefore it took us longer than I anticipated. They say 'thanks but no thanks', we are all civilised people.

“There was quite a lot of interest. Some talks went on, some stopped. I hope we get it done as soon as possible because I am actually tired of the process and speaking about it and would rather have it done.”

Doing better

Steiner did not want to get too involved in explaining why Esteban Gutierrez was unlikely to be retained for next year – stating only that many aspects of the team could have been better in 2016.

“You always can do better. I can do better. I am not happy with what we did,” he said.

“We could have done better. We had a fantastic start to the season and then had a dip but with hindsight you could always do better. I want to leave it like that."