If you’ve ever attended a Formula 1 event, you’ll know: The cars are loud. The revving of an F1 car’s power unit can reach up to 140 decibels. That’s like standing next to a firework as it’s exploding. Now imagine there’s twenty of them, twenty fireworks going off simultaneously as the cars roar past you at 200 mph. The shock waves rip through the air and rattle the bones in your chest. It’s a full-body sensory experience. Most importantly, it rules hard.
It’s exactly that visceral experience that Lego wanted to tap into when, last year, it partnered with Formula 1 to create ten full sets of teams and drivers for its Speed Champions line. This year, it’s taking that a step further, and making them an awesome, full-sized reality. Today at the Miami Grand Prix, twenty drivers—including the celebrity drivers for McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari—introduced themselves to the crowd while driving lifelike Big Builds of their F1 cars in the driver’s parade.
PHOTOGRAPH: STEVEN TEE; GETTY IMAGES
The project to get here has been as big as it sounds. Over the course of eight months, a team of 26 Lego engineers took about 22,000 hours total to build the brick-based fleet. This took the total cooperation of each Formula 1 team. Lego designer Marcel Stastny noted that each F1 team provided complete IP with approvals for faithful reproduction. “We had great cooperation,” Stastny said, which, beyond the engineering, was a coup given that Formula 1 teams guard the car’s designs so closely.
Before their track debut, the cars were displayed in the Lego Garage at the west campus of Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida. I had the opportunity to get inside the McLaren car, which is made from the exact same standard Lego bricks that your kids can buy at home, made with Lego’s famously tight tolerances. It feels … well, as solid as a brick, which makes sense given that the car weighs over 3,000 pounds. You can lean on it or slap it with your hand without worry, although I’m pretty sure someone would’ve stopped me if I’d tried to kick it. There are some surprisingly faithful features. It might not have a real V6 engine (in fact, each car can only go 12 mph), and the drag reduction system (DRS) might not work either, but those are real F1 Pirelli tires set in a Lego hub.
