Kimi Antonelli ‘massively impressed’ during private Mercedes F1 debrief despite Qatar GP fury

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Manchester United legend Gary Neville was in the paddock at the Qatar Grand Prix, and the driver who caught his eye was Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

Kimi Antonelli won’t have very pleasant memories from his first visit to the Qatar Grand Prix last season.

During his Formula 2 campaign last season, Antonelli qualified 11th before colliding with Kush Maini in the Sprint Race and then having an accident during the Feature Race.

Any ongoing concerns about his previous visit disappeared on Saturday, as Antonelli scored three points for Mercedes in the Sprint Race.

The teenager picked up a five-second penalty for track limits, which denied him P5, but Antonelli followed that up by putting his car on the third row of the grid for Sunday’s race.

Antonelli has proved a lot of people wrong since a worrying mid-season slump, and Neville admitted he was ‘massively impressed’ with how the Italian spoke in the team’s post-session debrief after the Sprint Race.

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Kimi Antonelli’s Qatar Grand Prix analysis in post-race debrief impresses Gary Neville

Neville was speaking to Sky Sports F1 (29/11 5:28 pm) ahead of qualifying about being in the Mercedes garage this weekend. He said: “I think, obviously, it’s an individual sport in some ways, but obviously, the actual driver element of it.

“But then seeing a team look after each driver, then seeing the team dynamic, the most fascinating thing for me, other than the detail, the analytics, the data that you can see, is just unbelievable, the level of detail that you see, was actually going into the debrief after the Sprint Race and seeing the two drivers.

“Obviously, George is 27, Kimi’s 18, and seeing an 18-year-old stand up, work through a checklist, articulate and analyse his own performance.

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“I don’t think an 18-year-old football player, and I look back to a Gary Neville at 18 years of age, the idea of standing up in front of 25 people and analysing where I’d gone wrong, what I’d done well, that was massively impressive, that to watch.

“To be fair, I think the feeling goes after the race; they were really happy. Kimi was a little bit annoyed with himself, because he obviously got the penalty.

“George said it was a little bit boring. I said, like a nil-nil draw, basically, because he just sort of like drifted around in second, but he was happy, he held his place.”

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Kimi Antonelli continues to set high standards as Qatar Grand Prix lap wasn’t ‘perfect’

Antonelli was in the running for Driver of the Day in Las Vegas, recovering from 17th on the grid to finish on the podium.

He won’t need to make up as many positions on Sunday to return to the rostrum, although with all three championship contenders ahead of him, he and George Russell now have to aim to disrupt the title challengers.

Speaking in his post-qualifying media session, Antonelli said: “I am not fully satisfied with P5 today, as I know we had a little bit more pace to show.

“That said, it is still a solid place to be starting tomorrow’s race from and gives us a good chance of banking a decent number of points.

“My final lap in qualifying wasn’t perfect. I had a strong second sector but struggled more than the rest of the weekend to hook up the first sector.

“I lost the rear a little bit at turn one, and that caused me to lose some momentum. That always makes it a little more difficult to recover the lost time through the rest of the lap.”

Antonelli created history in Las Vegas with his incredible comeback. He will want to become only the seventh driver in F1 history to achieve four or more podiums during his rookie campaign in Qatar.