Lando Norris stood there looking up at McLaren’s iconic motorhome as smoke billowed out of the back of it and an acrid smell filled the air.
He was dressed in a white t-shirt and black trousers and just his socks – in the haste to evacuate the building, he’d left his shoes and possessions in his drivers’ room on the bottom floor of the building.
Just minutes before, he’d been chilling in his private quarters while we were enjoying a cup of coffee and a spot of brunch when the lights went out and we were all told to get out of the building.
In panicked scenes in the Barcelona paddock, fire engines and ambulances arrived within minutes as marshals tackled the blaze, as well as Pirelli Motorsport chief Mario Isola, a part-time paramedic in his native Italy, who stormed into the motorhome with an extinguisher from the neighbouring Pirelli hospitality.
The motorhome was cordoned off and remained off limits to McLaren’s staff, while neighbouring teams threw open their doors in a rare display of camaraderie within the paddock.
Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri were forced to take sanctuary in the team’s engineering buildings as their pre-qualifying preparation was thrown into chaos.
Which makes his pole – his second of his Formula 1 career – even more impressive as he pipped Max Verstappen by 0.02s.
Fire and rescue on the scene of the McLaren hospitality fire
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
He said: “First of all, the best thing is everyone’s safe, everyone’s doing well. One person was taken to hospital just for some check-ups, but all good otherwise. So a bit of a scare for the whole team, never a nice thing.
“A bit more of a stressful day than I would have liked. I lost my shoes. That was probably as bad as it got for me!
“I’ve not been in my normal room. I’ve not been able to relax and chill out as much as what I normally do.
“I’ve had a lot of offers from people, so it’s been great. But a lot of the teams have been very, very nice to us.”
When asked by Autosport if he had been required to borrow equipment from rival teams and for extra details on the disruption, he added: “It’s all been a little bit messy.
“I have one or two sets of everything and I think they managed to get some stuff out but some of it’s probably not the best to use or it smells pretty bad from the fire.
“Some things I got out, but I like to listen to my music – Oscar complains a lot because my music’s so loud.
“But I just didn’t have that this time and I’m up in the engineering office and Oscar’s down in the truck below. And that’s Zak’s office that I’ve taken over, so now Zak’s a bit unhappy.
“Honestly, nothing’s been an issue. And I’ve never been that guy to kind of complain about these things.
“Maybe tomorrow will impact me a bit more that I can’t get that quiet time that that I love. But it’s not the end of the world, so I’m not going to complain about it.”
On Saturday night, McLaren released a statement saying that its team member who had been taken to hospital had been discharged, adding its “thanks go to the circuit and hospital medical staff for their care and support”.
McLaren now faces an anxious wait to discover the true extent of the damage caused by the fire, which is believe to have started above the team’s kitchen area at the rear of the building.
Fire alarm at the McLaren Hospitality
Photo by: Jon Noble
The building, known as the “Team Hub” has recently been refurbished and downsized to reduce transportation costs and hit sustainability targets.
However, Norris said he was unsure of how much of the Team Hub would be salvaged.
He added: “It is a shame that it won’t be used today or tomorrow, I don’t think, for anything, maybe not into the future, but that’s not anything that I know about for now.”
It comes at a crunch time as F1 teams embark on their first of three races in consecutive weekends, which already places staff under strain.
The triple header in Barcelona, Spielberg and Silverstone is a 3,000 mile round trip on the road where the erection and dismantling of the motorhome is a crucial part of the logistics.
A full deep dive into what caused the fire will be conducted by McLaren while Isola explained the scene he faced as he rushed to help.
He said: “We started to smell this air which was like burning plastic. And when I went down with a fire extinguisher, some guys from McLaren said they had just used theirs.
“We have them here and I took one. I went inside to try to help and inside I saw some smoke coming from the kitchen and then after a few minutes, the firefighters arrived.
“We just left to let them work but the smoke was quite intense, and the number of fires was quite a quite a lot.
“Luckily, nobody was injured, and just a couple of people that I understood, they were breathing some some smoke, but it should be okay, so everything is fine.”