Shortly before the final practice session of the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix started, fire broke out at the McLaren hospitality suite. The whole team, including drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, had to be evacuated. With the emergency crew still working on bringing the fire under control three hours later, many worried that McLaren’s performance in the Qualifying would also be influenced by the lack of hospitality — which turned out to not be the issue as Norris took pole position, and he bagged 2nd in the Grand Prix the following day.
However, even if it necessarily did not impact their results on Saturday and Sunday, the fire definitely didn’t make it an easy race weekend for the team. Andrea Stella, the team principal of the Woking-based squad, acknowledges the concerns that he and others felt about some team members being taken to the medical center after getting out of the building.
“Well, certainly the incident with the hospitality created a little bit of apprehension. Apprehension for our colleagues that initially seemed like they needed to have some care, but actually we were extremely relieved that there was nobody that needed any more than simply a check at the medical center. So that was very relieving.
“From a practical point of view for us as a race team, apart from some meeting rooms and having the food in the garage rather than in the hospitality, [it] wasn’t a big impact in terms of execution of the weekend,” he added.
Stella goes on to mention the help and solidarity other teams, organisers and everyone else in the paddock offered to McLaren: “The factor that I would like to highlight is that the assistance, the solidarity, the sympathy, the support that we received from each and every one of all the other teams, F1, FIA. That gave us, I think, a genuine true emotion.
“We were touched by this level of support. I was talking with another member of the team about the sense of community that we have in this paddock, and that sometimes we forget about [it] because we are here to compete with each other.
“But I think when it manifests itself in this way, we should remember that that’s the case, and we should never miss an opportunity to give an example.
“So I would actually appreciate it if you can report that that’s the feeling of McLaren. The feeling of McLaren is like we’re really impressed by the sense of community, the support that we have received.
“And this has made the execution of the weekend obviously more simple, and we could keep our focus on racing because we were taken care of, to some extent, by some of the other parties.”
This goes on to show that even though Formula 1 is an extremely competitive sport full of rivalries and a want to be better than others, when it comes to situations like the one in Barcelona, the whole paddock can and will come together. That is something that Stella and probably the rest of the papaya team are very grateful for — because after all, we are all only humans who need to help each other from time to time.
