Lego have built 10 life-size Formula 1 cars which were taken for a spin around the Miami International Autodrome by the drivers on Sunday ahead of the Miami Grand Prix
Formula 1 fans at the Miami Grand Prix were treated to a special surprise when all 20 drivers took part in a drivers’ parade to remember. The likes of Lewis Hamilton and pole-sitter Max Verstappen took to the track in specially-built cars that looked familiar – but were made almost entirely from Lego bricks.
Lego, a commercial partner of Formula 1, spent eight months designing and building 10 full-scale cars – one for each team on the grid. Each consists of around 400,000 individual bricks and weighs around one-and-a-half tons. They are fully driveable, powered by batteries and fitted with pedals and a working steering wheel, and each cockpit has been specially designed to fit two people in at the same time.
The end result was a unique drivers’ parade on Sunday as the two drivers for each team squeezed into their liveried machines to drive them in front of fans. Though it was the slowest lap they each completed over the whole race weekend, with the cars limited to 20kph.
Not that it stopped them from racing at every opportunity. Charles Leclerc, piloting the Ferrari Lego car, cut the apex at turn one to take the lead from George Russell driving the Mercedes, while Verstappen and Carlos Sainz were seen laughing and shouting at each other as they jostled for position during an unconventional drivers’ parade.
Jonathan Jurion was a senior designer on one of Lego’s most ambitious-ever big build projects. “We’re used to doing cars that drive, but doing 10 at once was a big challenge,” he told Mirror Sport.
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“We had eight months to do it all, so I’m glad we pulled it off. It took about 2,000 man hours per car to put together, so altogether it was more than 20,000 hours of work. It took two months to kick off the whole thing – the cockpit is the same for each car and then the custom car is built around it.”
The cars had been on display to fans over the course of the race weekend in Florida, though special care was taken to not give away the fact they were driveable. And though the performance of the Lego cars is no match for a real F1 car, they are still impressive creations which have been turning plenty of heads.
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Jurion said: “The cars are made from off-the-shelf pieces, so anyone could build them if they had enough pieces – about 400,000 pieces per car, so we have about four million pieces in the Lego garage. We saw the mechanics from the garage coming over and admiring the cars, so that’s really awesome to see.
“Lego bricks are not the most aerodynamic things, so we didn’t take that into account. These cars are very heavy – they weigh about one and a half tons each. Compared to a real F1 car, it was like double the weight. So it doesn’t compare or make any sense for the race!”
Lego chief product and marketing officer Julia Goldin said even the thought of F1 superstars driving her company’s creations gave her “goose bumps”. She told Mirror Sport: “It was amazing and I think it was fun for the drivers too.”
The company has a long-term partnership with F1 and more such stunts are on the way, but Goldin says the specifics of such plans are still to be decided. She added: “We’re talking about where we take it next and what are the other, amazing things we can do together, so watch this space.”