Lando Norris details how McLaren fire led to "stressful day" before pole

Lando Norris admits McLaren’s hospitality unit fire made for a more “stressful day” before he took pole position at the F1 Spanish Grand Prix.

There was drama in the Barcelona paddock shortly before the start of final practice on Saturday when McLaren evacuated their motorhome after a fire broke out, with emergency services and fire crews arriving quickly on the scene.

A McLaren team member was sent to hospital as a precaution, but was later discharged.

Norris went on to brilliantly defeat Red Bull’s Max Verstappen by just 0.020s in a thrilling qualifying on Saturday afternoon. And after claiming his second-ever F1 pole, the 24-year-old Briton detailed how the fire impacted his day.

“The best thing is that everyone was safe, everyone is doing well,” Norris said in the FIA press conference. “Yeah, so that’s the best news from everything. One person was taken to hospital just for some check-ups. But all good otherwise.

“A bit of a scare for the whole team, never a nice thing. But just a bit more probably of a stressful day than I would have liked. I lost my shoes, and that was probably as bad as it got for me honestly.

“Just different. I’ve not been in my normal room, I’ve not been maybe able to relax and chill out as much as I normally do. I’ve had a lot of offers from people, it’s been great.

"A lot of the teams honestly have been very, very nice to us, McLaren, in offering help and things like that, so that was all good from that side. But a shame it won’t be used today or tomorrow I don’t think for anything, and maybe not into the future. But that’s not anything that I know about for now.”

McLaren are still assessing the damage to their Team Hub, which was not used for the rest of the day, forcing Norris and the rest of the team to relocate and change their usual preparations.

“It’s all been a little bit messy,” Norris explained. “I think 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 like, I like to list not my music and stuff before, and Oscar complains a lot because my music is so loud pre-sessions. But I just didn’t have that this time.

“I’m up in the engineering office, and Oscar is down in the truck below. And that’s Zak’s office that I’ve taken over, so now Zak’s a bit unhappy, but Zak’s in there.

“Honestly, nothing’s been an issue, and I’ve never been the guy to complain about these kinds of things. Honestly I could be just doing nothing and jump in the car when I need to.

“When you have an ability to have a few minutes to yourself, and a couple of those things, you take them because you just want to relax and think to yourself for a few minutes before you go out and do it.

“Nothing for today, maybe tomorrow will impact me a bit more, that I can’t get quite just that quiet time that I love, but it’s not the end of the world. So I’m not going to complain about it.”