Tag Archives: endurance

Iconic Evolution

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The Porsche 911 may have looked pretty much the same for the past sixty years, but due to multiple ground-up redesigns it’s a vastly different machine from what it once was. Even the car used as the basis for LEGO’s 2016 Technic 42056 Porsche 911 GT3 RS set is now a long way behind the latest 911 iteration.

This is the newest version of Porsche’s evergreen endurance racer, the 565bhp 992-based GT3 R that made its debut last year.

Built by Lachlan Cameron (aka loxlego), this astonishing Technic replica of the GT3 R features working steering, five-height adjustable suspension, a six-speed paddle-shift gearbox (plus neutral and reverse), a flat-6 piston engine, plus opening and locking doors and engine cover.

Presented beautifully, you can find the complete gallery of images and full build details via Lachlan’s ‘Porsche 911 (992) GT3 R Flickr album, the Eurobricks discussion forum, and via the video below, plus you can find out how he creates amazing models like this one via his Master MOCers page by clicking this bonus link.

YouTube Video

My Other Le Mans Car’s a Peugeot

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The Technic 42156 Peugeot 9X8 Le Mans Hybrid Hypercar is a slightly weird, but nevertheless welcome, addition to LEGO’s officially-licensed line-up. First competing in 2022, before a full World Endurance Championship assault in 2023, the 9X8 has been… underwhelming.

A single podium all season and an 8th place at Peugeot’s home event of the 24 Heures de Mans is the best the car has achieved so far, but PeugeotSport are past race winners, so the results may come yet.

Until then though, if you own a 42156 Peugeot 9X8 and fancy swapping it for an endurance racer that’s more… winning, davidragon of Eurobricks has the answer!

Making his TLCB debut, davidragon has used the pieces from the 42156 Peugeot 9X8 to recreate a car from the other end of the World Endurance Classification, but one with rather more success.

The Chevrolet Corvette C8.R is the first mid-engined Corvette racing car, and placed second in the GTE-Pro class at Le Mans in 2021, before winning GTE-Am in 2023, finishing one place ahead of the second Peugeot 9X8 Hypercar that competed some three classes above it. Oof.

Davidragon’s incredible C8.R alternate features opening doors and hood, independent suspension, working steering, and a mid-mounted piston engine, and there’s lots more to see, including a link to building instructions, at the Eurobricks forum.

Click the link above to swap your Peugeot 9X8 for a Corvette C8.R, and improve your chances of winning some silverware.

Stow-on-the-Wold Avoiding Chipping Norton

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Running from Burford to near Worcester, the A424 is a main north/south road in the Cotswolds, passing through the pretty Norman town of Stow-on-the-Wold whilst avoiding the busy conurbation of Chipping Norton. It’s also a 2024 Le Mans endurance racer. But back to road, an… Oh, you’d prefer the car? Um, ok… bit weird, but alright.

This is the Alpine A424. Which is not a road. It is instead rebranded-Renault’s 2024 offensive into the burgeoning Le Mans Hypercar class, using an Oreca chassis and Mecachrome V6 engine from Formula 2, but featuring lots of ‘Alpine’ decals.

This superb Speed Champions replica of the road between Burford and Worcester 2024 Le Mans Hypercar comes from SFH_Bricks, who adds it to his ever-growing list of endurance racers. Building instructions are available (as are the excellent custom stickers), and you can drive to Worcester via Stow-on-the-Wold via the link above.

Bygone Motorsport Win

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Endurance racing is about to get properly exciting. After years of single team dominance due to limited competition, this year nineteen entrants across nine manufacturers will compete for the outright win.

One of several new or returning manufacturers, BMW will rejoin the top tier of endurance racing nearly a quarter of a century since they competed with this, the wild V12 LMR.

Using the same the engine as the Le Mans winning McLaren F1 GTR, the BMW V12 LM was developed with then-Formula 1 World Champions Williams, and deployed the new open-cockpit prototype rules against the old-school sports car designs in use by other teams. And it was… rubbish.

Slow, unreliable, and retiring after just a few dozen laps, the 1998 car was a disaster. So BMW and Williams started again, and returned in 1999 with this, the radically re-designed V12 LMR.

The all-new bodywork transformed the car, with it qualifying on pole and winning the first race it entered, at the 12 Hours of Sebring.

The big prize however was Le Mans, and despite fierce competition from Audi, Toyota, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz and others, it was a BMW V12 LMR that took (perhaps thanks to a little bit of luck) the overall win. Quite a turnaround from the embarrassment of the year before.

The team entered again in 2000, but a decade-long period of total Audi dominance had begun, and thus BMW withdrew the V12 LMR before the season was up.

BMW turned their attention instead to Formula 1, where the team continued their successful partnership with Williams. Thus without the V12 LMR, a BMW engine may never again have powered a race-winning Formula 1 car.

Suggested to us by a reader, PROTOTYP. of Flickr remembers BMW’s Le Mans glory with his fantastic V12 LMR model, riding atop 3D-printed replica wheels and with stunning period-correct vinyl decals.

Superbly presented, there’s more of the model to see at PROTOTYP.’s ‘BMW LMR LMP Le Mans 1999’ album, and you can click the link above to jump back to Le Mans 1999. BMW will sure be remembering it too, as they return to Le Mans later this year, some 25 years on…

GT-ONE

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Built for the GT1 regulations of the late ’90s, this is the Toyota GT-ONE, a V8-powered homologation endurance racer (yes, there really was a ‘road’ version’) that took second at the Le Mans 24 Hours.

Created by SFH_Bricks, this incredible Speed Champions replica of the GT-One captures the astonishing real car wonderfully, with the excellent brick-work enhanced by a superbly accurate livery courtesy of Brickstickershop.

Building instructions are available and there’s more to see of SFH’s fantastic 1999 Le Mans racer on Flickr – click the link above to take a closer look.

Having a Lark

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Once the world’s fastest production car, and winner of the 1995 Le Mans 24 Hours, this is the McLaren F1 GTR.

Following its victory at Le Mans (the first time either a manufacturer or team had won the race on their Le Mans debut), McLaren’s Ron Dennis and businessman Kazumichi Goh decided to take the car to Japan, forming McLaren Team Lark, and taking on the country’s domestic teams in the newly formed GT500 championship.

The Lark McLaren F1 GTRs were dominant, comfortably beating domestic rivals from Nissan, Toyota and Honda to win every GT500 race in 1996 bar one.

So dominant was the F1 GTR in fact, that the organisers effectively legislated it out of the championship, imposing so many restrictions on the team that they withdrew before the start of the ’97 season.

The result, after that single all-conquering year, was that the rest of the GT500 teams considerably upped their game. GT500 cars became much faster, more exciting, and more technologically-advanced, and thus the ongoing success of the GT500 Championship has more than a little to do with a little British car that entered for just one season some three decades ago.

This wonderful homage to the short-lived but spectacular Team Lark McLaren F1 GTRs comes from TLCB debutant brickengineeringdude, who has recreated the ’96 championship-winning racer brilliantly in brick form. 3D-Printed wheels, tyres decals, and a superb approximation of the Team Lark livery make brick’s F1 GTR instantly recognisable, and there’s much more to see at their photostream via the link.

But what of Team Lark and GT500? Well owner Kazumichi Goh went on to buy an Audi R8, and with it won the 2004 Le Mans 24 Hours, becoming only the second Japanese team to win the race outright. Meanwhile Japan’s GT500 championship has gone from strength to strength, but has never again been won by a non-Japanese car since the Team Lark McLarens of 1996…

Small Scale Saturday

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TLCB Elves like giant remote controlled behemoths here at The Lego Car Blog. So do we if we’re honest, but we’re also marginally more sophisticated than our mythical workforce, and thus we also like creations that are rather smaller. In fact, clever parts usage, attention to detail, and top-notch presentation often count for more in small-scale.

Proving that point today we have two excellent examples of small-scale building, each of which is only approximately Speed Champions set size, yet packs the visual punch of models a hundred times the parts count.

The first of today’s small-scale creations (above) is previous bloggee SFH_Bricks‘ superb Mercedes-Benz CLK LM. Entered in the 1998 24 Heures du Mans, both CLK LMs retired around the half-way point with engine issues, but were the fastest cars by some margin prior to their retirement. Entered in shorter races and the CLK LMs were dominant, coming first and second in every single round of the ’98 FIA Endurance Championship. You could even get a road legal version, which SFH_Bricks has built too.

Today’s second small-scale build comes from Ids de Jong, and is a gloriously Blacktron-coloured cyperbunk sports car entitled the ‘Blackstar CX2′. Two deeply cool-looking mini-figures (or – presumably – two less cool-looking ones) can fit inside, and there’s more of Ids’ creation to see at their photostream.

Click the links above to check out more of both builds, and if you’ve found a small-scale creation that you think is deserving of an appearance here you can take a look at our Submission Guidelines and let us know by clicking these words.

More Endurance

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After years of very limited top-tier competition, the fastest class at Le Mans undergoing a spectacular resurgence. Works teams from Ferrari, Toyota, Porsche, Peugeot, and Cadillac all entered in 2023, with BMW, Lamborghini and Alpine all set to join in the coming years.

The 2023 24 Heures du Mans was won by a jubilant Ferrari, returning almost six decades after their last win, following an epic race-long battle with favourites Toyota. Joining his previously blogged classic Le Mans endurance racers, SFH_Bricks has recreated the 2023-winning Ferrari 499P brilliantly in Speed Champions form, alongside a host of other Hypercar-Class teams from this year’s event.

The second place Toyota GR010, doubtless still miffed at being slowed down by the FIA ‘Balance of Performance’ rules that likely cost them the win, the wonderfully-liveried (if uncompetitive) Penske Racing Porsche 963, and the third-placed Cadillac V-Series.R join the Ferrari 499P in SFH_Bricks’ ‘Le Mans 2023 Hypercars’ album.

Each Le Mans Hypercar wears an accurate livery -created in collaboration with brickstickershop – and is presented flawlessly, with building instructions available too. Join the 2023 race courtesy of SFH via the third link in the text above, plus you can check out the top-tier Le Mans cars from decades past via the second.

100 Ans du Mans

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The world’s greatest motor race celebrates its century this weekend. Founded in 1923 on a public road loop around the village of Le Mans, a route that would later become today’s ‘Circuit de la Sarthe’, the 24 Heures du Mans remains the pinnacle of endurance racing.

Of course due to some German expansionist policies in the late 1930s, the 2023 event is not the one hundredth running of the race, rather the 91st, but nevertheless it’s going to be a special year, with both a notable increase in Hypercar competition and the final year of the GTE class before it’s replaced by the more widely adopted GT3 regulations.

Flickr’s SpaceMan Nathan is celebrating Le Mans’ centenary, and the final year of GTE, with this lovely recreation of the Circuit de la Sarthe pitlane, complete with five Speed Champions GTE AM cars. Accurate liveries and trackside sponsorship add to the ambience, and you can enter the pitlane at Le Mans’ centenary year via the link above to watch the GTE finale.

Le Mans ’95

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Mid-’90s endurance racing was – in this writer’s opinion – the peak of Le Mans cool. Purpose-built racers competed on equal terms wildly fast supercars, based on those that could actually be bought by the public (in some years they even had to have space for luggage in the regulations!). This created both spectacular on-track battles and some astonishing road cars, with this being one of them; the Le Mans winning 1995 McLaren F1 GTR.

Designed by Gordon Murray and powered by a BMW M-Power V12, the McLaren F1 was the fastest production car in the world, and remains the fastest naturally-aspirated production car to this day. Twenty-eight ‘GTR’-spec F1s were produced for racing, with the model winning not just Le Mans, but becoming the first non-domestic car to win the All-Japan Grand Touring Car Championship.

This is the Le Mans winning car, which beat rivals from Ferrari, Corvette, Honda, and Porsche, plus a range of purpose-built open-cockpit racers, and took third, fourth and fifth places too. It comes from previous bloggee 3D supercarBricks, who has captured the F1 GTR and its ’95 Le Mans livery beautifully in brick form.

Custom wheels and opening doors, front trunk and engine cover feature, and there’s much more to see at 3D’s photostream. Click the link above to travel as fast as it was possible to go in car in 1995.

Greater Endurance

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After spending some time with your Mom over Christmas, she said we needed ‘more endurance’. Well today’s post will rectify that (we assume this is what she meant), with no less than five glorious historic Group C / Endurance racers.

Each is the work of TLCB debutant SFH_Bricks, who has recreated an array of classic Le Mans racer winners wonderfully in Speed Champions scale, with some of the best decals (courtesy of Brickstickershop) that we’ve ever seen.

From the iconic Rothmans Porsche 956 (top), the wild V12-powered Jaguar XJR-9 LM, the Sauber C9 (above) that was so fast along the Mulsanne Straight that chicanes were added the following year, the Mazda 787B (below) – still the only car to win Le Mans without using a reciprocating engine, to the Peugeot 905 Evo (bottom) that took victory in ’92, each is a near perfect Speed Champions replica of its amazing real world counterpart.

Each model is presented beautifully and all are available to view at SFH’s ‘Le Mans Collection Series’ album on Flickr, where you can also find links to building instructions at the Rebrickable platform. Click the link above for even more endurance.

Advantage

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We’re rounding out 2022 with exactly the sort of car that this crumbling ruin in the corner of the internet was created for; the mighty Aston Martin V12 Vantage GT3.

Built by previous bloggee Levihathan, this eye-catching Technic recreation of Aston Martin’s 2010s-2020s endurance racer captures the real deal brilliantly, with the aesthetics further enhanced by bespoke decals that add to the race-ready realism.

Inside, Levihathan’s V12 Vantage is just as impressive, with a working V12 piston engine underneath the opening hood, functioning steering and suspension, a detailed race interior, and a paddle-shift gearbox.

There’s much more of the build to see at Levihathan’s ‘Aston Martin Vantage V12 GT3’ album, and you can make the jump to all the imagery via the link in the text above.

Racing Snake

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Early-’00s American cars are fat, badly built, inefficient, poor handling crap-boxes, and you’d have to be an idiot to like any of them.

This is an early-’00s Dodge Viper; a fat, badly built, inefficient, poor handling crap-box, and it’s one of our favourite cars ever.

Even more so in this configuration, the 2003 GTS-R endurance racer, as constructed to near-perfection in 1:14 scale by TLCB favourite SP_LINEUP.

SP has used over 1,300 pieces to recreate the iconic American racing car, including a beautifully detailed interior, engine bay, chassis bracing, brick-built drivetrain, and the spectacular GTS-R long-tail bodywork.

There’s more to see at SP’s photostream and you can make the jump to an early-’00s endurance race – and one of TLCB favourite cars ever (because we’re idiots) – via the link above.

Alpine Pass

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History is littered with vehicle manufacturers who sold about five cars a year, but yet somehow thought they could afford a top-tier racing team. Caterham, Marussia, Spyker, TVR and others have all tried – and without exception failed – to turn a tiny (and sometimes non-existent) sports car business into a successful racing team.

Re-born Alpine are the latest company to have a go. However whilst they also only sell about five cars a year, they’re owned by Renault, whose pockets and racing experience are rather deeper than Marussia’s…

Cue the Renault F1 team becoming Alpine in 2021, and – perhaps less encouragingly – this; the Alpine A480 Le Mans Hypercar entrant. Which wasn’t a Hypercar at all, rather a ‘grandfathered’ LMP1 Rebellion/Oreca 07 with a new paint-job.

Still, it brought a much-needed competitor to the top tier of endurance racing, which is currently rather short of entries, and gave the French fans something to support.

This neat brick-built version of the ‘Alpine’ A480 comes from Lasse Deleuran (aka gtahelper), who’s added it to his extensive line-up of Le Mans cars from the last few years.

There’s more of the model to see on Brickshelf via the link above, and we’ll be looking forward to Lasse’s Lego versions of the new Peugeot and Ferrari Le Mans Hypercars which are due to join the field soon. We just hope they do a bit more than give an old Rebellion/Oreca 07 a new paint job…

Circuit of Speed Champions | Picture Special

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We’ve all dreamed of building our own racing circuit from LEGO bricks, with tyre barriers, grandstands, food stands, a pit lane, maybe even a Dunlop bridge…

Well SpaceMan Nathan has actually gone and done it, taking fourteen official LEGO Speed Champions sets and creating this wonderful race track diorama, complete with of all the above and more!

Measuring 144 by 112 studs, Nathan’s Circuit of Speed Champions includes everything a race track should, with a crowd of cheering race fans present to watch to the on-track battle.

There’s loads more to see of Nathan’s beautifully presented circuit diorama at his photostream on Flickr – join the action trackside via the link above!