From GMM

The day after marking its first win for eight years, the once-great Williams team is counting its losses.

(Photo WRI2)

"Everything in our garage is totally destroyed," said team manager Dickie Stanford, who mere hours after holding aloft the constructors' trophy on the podium found himself wielding a fire extinguisher.

It is believed rival teams have already offered to help Williams to get up to speed for Monaco by loaning the Oxfordshire based team any critical equipment.

It could have been worse. Although one fuel rig mechanic was pulled from the garage with his legs on fire, and airlifted to hospital, no one was critically injured in the biggest pit fire anybody had seen in F1 in recent memory.

In a press release, the team said the fire originated from the fuel area.

(Photo: WRI2)

Dozens of those who helped to put out the fire, wearing the shirts of teams up and down the smoke-filled pitlane, received treatment in the medical centre, and seven were in hospital overnight.

"We will have everything we need to run operationally at Monaco, » said Williams chief operations engineer Mark Gillan to Autosport.

Initial inspections of Bruno Senna's car, which was in the garage when the fire erupted as it had not finished the race, suggest that the chassis is undamaged. However, team Williams will not be certain of that until it has examined the car more closely back at its U.K. base.