Gary Neville Reveals 'Unbelievable' Qatar GP Detail He'd Never See in Football

Gary Neville revealed the most fascinating thing he observed after spending the day with Mercedes at the Qatar Grand Prix and seeing something he would not in football.

The former Manchester United defender spent the day with the Silver Arrows squad for the Sprint race and Grand Prix qualifying for the penultimate round of this season's Formula 1 campaign.

The action on Saturday saw the final Sprint of the season, which was won by Oscar Piastri ahead of George Russell's Mercedes, with Piastri's McLaren team-mate Lando Norris in third.

Championship leader Norris now has a lead of 22 points in the drivers' standings over Piastri and is 25 ahead of Red Bull's Max Verstappen.

With McLaren already having long wrapped up the Constructors' Championship, the Drivers' Championship could also be concluded today.

If Norris wins this afternoon's Grand Prix, he will be crowned the new world champion, something which will also happen if by the conclusion of the weekend he is more than 25 points ahead of both Piastri and Verstappen.

This afternoon's race at the Lusail circuit on the outskirts of Doha has a tantalising grid after Piastri took pole ahead of Norris and Verstappen.

Mercedes duo Russell and Kimi Antonelli will line up fourth and fifth respectively.

Gary Neville. (Image: Getty)

Neville spent Saturday with Mercedes and even attended the debrief sessions the team holds with drivers Russell and Antonelli.

And the former United defender was impressed by what he saw, especially from rookie Antonelli who is still only a teenager and aged just 19, analyse his performance in such detail and level of articulation in front of a team of 25 people.

It is something that he cannot imagine himself having done at that age, or other football players being able to do, for that matter.

Speaking to Sky Sports, Neville said: "The most fascinating thing for me, other than the detail, the analytics, the data that you can see is just an unbelievable level of detail, was actually going into the debrief after the sprint race and seeing the two drivers.

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

"I don't think an 18-year-old football player, I mean 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 to watch."