Tag Archives: Formula 1

Space Race

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The mid-’90s were a high watermark for Renault. Their Espace multi-purpose-vehicle was a smash hit, creating an entirely new class of car in Europe that other manufacturers scrambled to copy, whilst on track their V10 Formula 1 engine was winning absolutely everything with Williams and Benetton. And then in 1995, in moment of utter genius, they decided to merge the two…

The result was the Renault Espace F1, a one-off carbon-fibre minivan with a mid-mounted 800bhp V10 F1 engine, a top speed of nearly 200mph, and publicity other manufacturers could only dream of.

This fantastic recreation of Renault’s unhinged MPV is the work of Flickr’s Sergio Batista, and features replica decals, 3D-printed wheels, LED lights, a detailed engine and brick-built suspension, plus – in authentic Espace tradition – space for multiple mini-figures. There’s lots more of the model to see at Sergio’s photostream you can race back to when Renault were on top via the link above.

Bricks on Track | LEGO Documentary Trailer

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LEGO’s extensive new partnership with Formula has brought every single Formula 1 team to bedroom floors in brick form. Which of course meant some extensive marketing was needed too.

Cue the 2025 Miami Formula 1 Grand Prix drivers parade, in which nineteen of the world’s best racing drivers (and Lance Stroll) took to the circuit in life-size, drivable, 400,000 piece replicas of their real Formula 1 cars, giving the Alpine drivers their best chance of an overtake all season.

The hugely ambitious project was filmed throughout its year-long gestation, with an hour-long behind-the-scenes documentary soon due for release, showing how LEGO and Formula 1 pulled off one the greatest racing marketing stunts of recent times. The official trailer has just dropped, and you can get ready for the slowest, but perhaps best, Formula 1 race of 2025 via LEGO’s YouTube channel above.

Rolling a Six

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The Lego Car Blog Elves are very excited today…

This is the 1976 Tyrrell P34, Formula 1’s only racing-winning 6-wheeler, and – as things currently stand – the only 6-wheeler that will ever win a race as the fun-sponges at Formula 1 banned cars with more than four wheels a few years later. Because… honestly we have no idea.

This fabulous recreation of the Elf-liveried P34 comes from TLCB debutant bentobrick, who has constructed motorsport’s most recognisable design brilliantly in brick, including a working replica Cosworth DFV engine and four-wheel steering (as shown in the excellent render below).

There’s more of bentobrick’s superb 1976 Tyrrell P34 to see at the Eurobricks forum, where a link to building instructions is also available, and you can head to a Grand Prix in 1976 via the link above.

The Horndog

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2025 is the year that Christian Horner finally departed Red Bull after managing the team through two decades, six World Championships, and a few compromising Whats App messages…

He is in fact the only Team Principal that Red Bull Racing have ever had, having led the team from its formation in 2005 right up until the pictures of his horndog he rather stupidly sent caught up with him.

The team continues on however, and their RB21 is still able to win races (at least in the hands of one of its drivers), despite the loss of another titan of the team, designer Adrian Newey (although his departure wasn’t due to sending inappropriate pictures of his wang to female staff).

Cue Y Akimeshi‘s excellent brick-built recreation of the Red Bull RB21, pictured within a street circuit vignette featuring some superb ‘Pirelli’ lettering. There’s more of the build to see on Flickr and you can send some compromising What App messages and undo a twenty year legacy via the link above.

F1: The Movie

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Oh how we want to hate ‘F1: The Movie’. From its stupid name, to its cliched plot (old guy comes out of retirement for one last shot at glory), to the fact it is basically one giant advert for F1…

Except, it seems like it might – annoying – be rather good.

Currently with an 83% Rotten Tomatoes score, ‘F1: The Movie’ used real cars (modified F2 machines) and real tracks to create a film that takes the audience as close to being in the car as possible, even if the main protagonist being sixty years old is pushing the believability to breaking point.

Cue this fantastic recreation of the fictional team at the heart of the story, ‘APX GP’, as created beautifully in brick form by NV Carmocs of Flickr. A stunning livery perfectly captures the ‘real’ car, and you can head to the cinema, um… race track via the link above, where nearly a dozen images are available to view. Even if you’re sixty.

In Remembrance of Luca Rusconi

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Writing for The Lego Car Blog is mostly a happy thing. Occasionally however, it isn’t, and with much sadness this is one of those times.

Multiple bloggee, TLCB Master MOCer, and one of the most talented vehicle builders anywhere in the world, has placed his last piece.

Famed for his spectacular historic Formula 1 cars, Luca Rusconi, aka RoscoPC, was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident just outside of his hometown Milan. Aged 54, he leaves behind his wife, three children, and a Lego Community that will miss him terribly.

His incredible Lego work remains on Flickr, his website, and via archives such as our own, and we encourage you to take a look – we have no doubt it will forever be amongst the finest ever built.

Life-Size LEGO F1 in Miami

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Today is the Miami Formula 1 Grand Prix, and this year there’s even more plastic than usual.

The plastic surgery capital of America, Miami is used to seeing tons and tons of petroleum-based polymer. Most of it walking around. But this year there’s an additional fifteen tons of it, and none of the extra is in the faces of the race-goers. Because LEGO have recreated all ten of the 2025 Formula 1 teams’ cars in life-size form, from a staggering four million bricks.

A year in the making, each 400,000 piece, 1,500kg replica was produced by LEGO’s Kladno studio in the Czech Republic, who constructed each car around a metal frame and accurately recreated every team’s livery and sponsors.

Best of all, all ten 1:1 scale Formula 1 cars have been fitted with working steering, brakes, and an electric motor, which means that right now (literally as we type this), 2025’s Formula 1 drivers are aboard their own life-size LEGO Formula 1 cars driving around the Miami circuit.

With the cars limited to 20km/h, the parade lap will take a little longer than the Miami lap record, but that’ll give the fans plenty of time to watch actual Formula 1 drivers trundling around a racetrack in LEGO. And Lance Stroll will still probably find a way to stack it.

You’ll be able to watch the drivers in action in their very own 1:1 scale LEGO Formula 1 racers at the Miami Grand Prix on YouTube once Formula 1 upload it, you can see Lando Norris getting some sneaky life-size LEGO-driving practice in here, and you can check out the full range of officially-licensed LEGO Formula 1 sets, which the life-size models have been built to promote, by clicking this bonus link.

Fastest Printer

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LEGO have released an enormous array of officially-licensed Formula 1 sets for 2025, and this includes last year’s Ferrari SF24 car.

But this year’s Ferrari has one crucial difference from the 2024 car; seven-time Formula 1 World Champion Lewis Hamilton. Which means Ferrari’s smooth-brained strategists can now screw up the race of the most successful driver in Formula 1 history.


Cue this phenomenal recreation of the 2025 Scuderia Ferrari, which swaps the Technic construction of LEGO’s official SF24 set for Model Team visual realism.

Flickr’s Szunyogh Balazs has enhanced this further with an accurate livery, including Ferrari’s HP title sponsor. And whilst printers are amongst the most  irritating machines in existence, with ours seemingly controlled by Ferrari’s aforementioned strategists, it’s a considerable improvement on subversive adverts for cigarettes.

There’s a whole lot more of Szunyogh’s beautifully presented Ferrari SF25 to see at his Flickr album of the same name, and you can Send-to-Printer via the link above.

LEGO Technic 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 F1 Car | Set Preview

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Following our huge preview of the all new LEGO Formula 1 range, encompassing all ten teams and spanning themes from Duplo to Technic, there’s one more Formula 1 set that escaped the reveal. This is the brand new LEGO Technic 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 F1 Car!

Yes, like Red Bull evading the Formula 1 budget cap, or their team principal dodging responsibility for sexual misconduct, this new flagship Technic Formula 1 set eluded last week’s reveal. Although perhaps LEGO were waiting until Max Verstappen had wrapped up the Drivers’ World Championship for more clout.

Whatever, 42206 joins the equally-sized 42207 Ferrari SF-24 F1 Car previously previewed, and brings Verstappen’s title-winning F1 car to the Technic range. Like the Ferrari, the new Red Bull RB20 is aimed at ages 18+ and features a working V6 engine with spinning MGU-H unit, a two-speed gearbox, steering, suspension, operational rear-wing DRS, replica (although equal-width) Pirelli slicks, and a billion stickers.

Much like the real Red Bull F1 Team, the new 42206 set manages some trick accountancy too, costing the same €229.99 / $229.99 / £199.99 as its Ferrari counterpart, but with three-hundred more parts (although we’re not sure where they’ve all gone). How’s that for attention to the back-story! Thus if price-per-part is your thing, 42206 is the better value of the two 2025 Technic Formula 1 flagships.

You’ll be able to get your hands on the new LEGO Technic 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 F1 Car when it races into stores in March 2025, joining the rest of an expansive LEGO Formula 1 line-up.

LEGO Technic Mercedes-AMG F1 W14… | Set Previews

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#TeamLH #Blessed #Vegan #JoiningFerrarifortheMoney

Shock Formula 1 news this week, as the most successful driver of all time is due to depart the team with whom he has won six World Championships to join Scuderia Ferrari at the end of the 2024 season.

Lewis Hamilton is looking for his eighth title, to take him clear of sharing the championship record with Michael Schumacher, and thinks Ferrari might be the team to do it (despite their long-time strategy of buying past champions, and promptly consigning their winning streak to history). There may also be some money involved.

Cue #TeamLH, surely at the bottom of even the filthy cesspit that is ‘X’, losing their collective minds, and 2024’s Mercedes-AMG F1 W15 being the team’s last to be driven by Lewis.

But back to 2023 – when Hamilton was definitely never ever leaving Mercedes-AMG – and two new LEGO Technic sets that add the season’s second best car to the 2024 Technic line-up; These are the brand new Technic 42165 Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 E Performance Pull-Back and Technic 42171 Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 E Performance.

Technic 42165 Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 E Performance Pull-Back

Constructed from 240 pieces and aimed at ages 7+, the Technic 42165 Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 E Performance Pull-Back, which we won’t be referring to by its full title again, brings Hamilton’s 2023 Formula 1 racer to bedroom floors for a pocket-money price.

With accurate shaping and livery, plus authentic sponsorship decals, 42165 looks fantastic (even if it doesn’t have slick tyres…. again), making it perhaps the best Pull-Back Technic set LEGO have ever created.

But it’s also $27/£21, which is about twice the price that Technic Pull-Backs used to be. Thus despite being the best ever Pull-Back Technic set, it might simultaneously be the worst $27/£21 one, with no technical features whatsoever.

For #TeamLH* we suspect that won’t matter though, and if you’re among them you can get your hands on the new 42165 Pull-Back when it goes on sale later this year.

Technic 42171 Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 E Performance

At six times the pieces and nine times the price, this is 42165’s (much) bigger brother; the brand new LEGO Technic 42171 Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 E Performance.

Aimed at ages 18+, 42171 recreates Lewis Hamilton’s 2023 Formula 1 car at a huge 1:8 scale and, unlike the recent non-specific 42141 Technic McLaren Formula 1 Race Car set, is a true replica of its real-world counterpart.

With accurate sponsorship decals and awesome new slick tyres (hurrah!!), 42171 certainly looks the part, but is perhaps a bit light on the technical bits. There’s working steering, a V6 engine and rear differential, an opening rear wing mimicking DRS, and… that’s it. Which is about as much a set costing a quarter of the price. And that price is $220/£190.

Thus despite its 1,520 pieces, 42171 is going to be a rather exclusive set. Which is suitably Formula 1. Expect to see those ace new tyres opening up a world of new creations though…

*If #TeamLH discover that LEGO included an Ayrton Senna mini-figure in the Icons 10330 McLaren MP4/4 set, but that neither of these Mercedes-AMG F1 sets include a miniature Lewis Hamilton, Twitter’s going to explode.

Speed Champions 76919 2023 McLaren Formula 1 Race Car | Set Preview

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During our reveal of the 2024 LEGO Speed Champions sets, fans may have noticed that one number, 76919, was missing. Well it’s missing no more; this is the brand new 76919 2023 McLaren Formula 1 Race Car!

Replicating last year’s podium-placing McLaren MCL60 racing car (although peculiarly not called that), 76919 recreates Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri’s 2023 challenger from 245 papaya and black pieces, and about the same number of stickers.

It’s here we’d normally bemoan the stickerage, but in the case of a Formula 1 car, where the real thing wears sponsors on every inch of bodywork, they create wonderful authenticity. Every real McLaren Team sponsor is included, even the dodgy crypto-currency ones, whilst the slick tyres wear accurate Pirelli-printed type too.

The new 76919 2023 McLaren Formula 1 Race Car will reach stores in March of 2024, and we’re hoping it’s the start of many more LEGO Speed Champions replica F1 racers.

Monaco ’88

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‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, the Toyota Corolla, and the Monaco Grand Prix. All simultaneously the greatest examples of their respective genres, and also the most boring.

But Formula 1 in Monaco wasn’t always a procession. Before the cars were the size of school buses, which these days makes overtaking impossible, Monaco could put on quite a show.

Back in 1988, even with the complete dominance of the McLaren-Honda MP4/4, the ’88 Monaco Grand Prix delivered. Twenty-six cars started – two of which were even called ‘Megatron’ (seriously, look it up!) – just ten finished, and Ayrton Senna was the class of the field.

Out-qualifying his team-mate Alain Prost by a staggering 1.4 seconds, Senna led the race by almost a minute… until he didn’t. A momentary lapse of concentration eleven laps from the finish and he hit the wall, whereupon he exited his broken McLaren and walked home.

Prost took the win (his forth and final Monaco GP victory), followed by Gerhard Berger’s Ferrari some twenty seconds back. Which means there’s perhaps some artistic license with the cars’ proximity in alex_bricks‘ stunning 1988 Monaco Grand Prix vignette, but in every other respect this is a spectacularly realistic homage to the Monte Carlo street race.

Recreating the circuit as it was in the late-’80s required Alex to watch old race footage (which is surely some of the most fun research required to build a Lego model), matching his brick-built version of the Mediterranean Principality to the televised imagery from the time.

The result is a replica of the streets of Monaco as they were in 1988 so perfect we can practically hear the noise from the Formula 1 cars bouncing off the walls of the buildings, with Alex displaying his incredible build at the Brickfair show earlier in the year.

Fortunately he’s uploaded a few images to Flickr too, so you can join TLCB Team immersing themselves in Monaco in 1988 via his photostream. Click the link above to head the greatest race on the Formula 1 calendar, long before it was boring.

What Might Have Been

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The story of the 2022 Formula 1 season is one of what might have been. After years in the doldrums, Scuderia Ferrari finally had the fastest car on the grid, and not only that, they had one of the most talented driver pairings too. Ferrari duly won two of the first three races, with fastest lap at all three, and with only one podium place dropped. And then – courtesy of some inexplicable tactical decisions – they threw it all away.

Now longstanding readers of this crumbling ruin in the corner of the internet will know that we aren’t Scuderia Ferrari’s biggest fans, what with them being immoral scumbags and everything, but if they stopped us having to see Christian Horner’s smug face every week we’d have taken it. However, unfortunately for Ferrari’s drivers – and us – some of the worst decision making in modern Formula 1 history gifted Red Bull’s Max Verstappen a second consecutive World Championship, and Horner’s smugness gained its own gravity.

Still, Ferrari’s 2022 F1 car looked rather lovely, and probably was the fastest car of the season, if only the team weren’t run by muppets, and it looks just as stunning in brick form courtesy of Noah_L, who has added the F1-75 to his amazing catalogue of Scuderia Ferrari racers.

Noah’s astonishing attention to detail is brought to life by some truly masterful building techniques, with superbly replicated decals and impeccable presentation making his Scuderia Ferrari F1-75 one of the most realistic real-world cars of the year so far.

A beautiful gallery of imagery is available to view on Flickr, where links to Noah’s previous Scuderia Ferrari racers and building instructions for the F1-75 pictured here can also be found. Build your own 2022 title challenger and reenact Ferrari’s strategic incompetence (not pitting under the safety car, pitting two cars at once, pitting for the wrong tyres…) via the link above. Just don’t be surprised if Christian Horner appears out of nowhere looking smug.

You Better Bolide It

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Revealed here at The Lego Car Blog as part of the new Technic line-up for 2023, the new 42151 Bugatti Bolide set is not a TLCB favourite, being an expensive officially-licensed version of a car we hadn’t heard of, with limited technical functionality.

But that hasn’t stopped previous bloggee M-Longer, who has used 42151’s 905 pieces to create something rather better.

M_Longer’s fantastic 42151 B-Model, which not only looks far more appealing than the set from which it has been built, appears completely unconstrained by the Bolide’s 905 pieces. In fact the only giveaway to the model’s origins are a few upside-down stickers.

Better yet, the Bolide’s black-and-yellow colour scheme works a treat on this alternate, creating a Formula 1 car reminiscent of those that wore the Renault-Sport livery in the late 2010s.

Working steering and a V6 engine turned by the rear wheels feature, and there’s more to see of M-Longer’s brilliant Bugatti Bolide B-Model at both Bricksafe and Eurobricks, where a link to building instructions can also be found.

There’ll be Elf to Pay

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It’s not often that The Lego Car Blog Elves are enthusiastic about a Lego model, beyond it resulting in a meal token. Today however, they’re beyond excited, as – in their minds – their ancestors sponsored the 1985 Lotus 97/T that gave Ayrton Senna his debut win.

What with it being the ’80s, John Player Special cigarettes did too – and it’s debatable which is worse for your health – but nevertheless that JPS gold-on-black livery sure does look cool.

This spectacular replica of the race-winning Lotus is the work of recent bloggee Robson M, whose other cigarette-sponsored Formula 1 car, also driven by Ayron Senna, appeared here earlier in the month.

A stunning recreation of the Elf/JPS livery, perfect presentation, and some rather clever building techniques make Robson’s Lotus 97/T well worth a closer look, and you can jump to 1985 via the link above, along with a bunch of excited TLCB Elves.