Haas boss Gunther Steiner has admitted that a question mark is hanging over Esteban Gutierrez's future.

While the Mexican is backed significantly by Carlos Slim and has the support of the team's technical partner Ferrari, his place for 2017 seems much less secure than that of his teammate Romain Grosjean.

"Frankly, it is clear that we expected more when we made the agreement with him," Steiner is quoted as saying by Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat.

"While it is true that he has had a lot of bad luck, particularly early in the season, when Grosjean collected most of the points and [Gutierrez] suffered from technical problems that were not his fault.

"However, we have also seen quite a few opportunities to grab points in the second half of the season. So we will give him a few more races to show what he can do."

The report adds that Kevin Magnussen and Felipe Nasr are among the candidates to replace Gutierrez.