Formula 1 hasn’t always been dulled by Mercedes-AMG’s utter dominance. Back in the early 2000s it was dulled by Scuderia Ferrari’s utter dominance, which peaked with this car; 2004’s imaginatively named F2004.
Winning fifteen of the season’s eighteen races, taking Ferrari to their sixth consecutive Constructor’s Championship, and Michael Schumacher to his fifth straight Driver’s Championship (and seventh overall), the F2004 was one of the most successful Formula 1 cars of all time, and the penultimate Ferrari of the V10 era.
This magnificent replica of Schumacher’s championship winning Scuderia Ferrari F2004 is the work of newcomer LN Teknik, who has recreated the real car beautifully in Technic form.
Working inboard pushrod suspension, functional steering, a removable engine cover and front and rear wings, plus – of course – a working V10 engine all feature, and there’s lots more to see at Flickr, Bricksafe, and the Eurobricks forum, where a link to building instructions can also be found.
It’s time for one of TLCB’s infamous rants! We know you’ve been missing these…
Mission Winnow. “What?” we hear you ask. Exactly. We all asked that when the world’s most famous (read ‘expensive’) Formula 1 team revealed a car emblazoned with a brand that no-one had ever heard of at the start of the 2019 season.
But Ferrari being Ferrari – i.e. having the morals of a Mexican drug cartel – we knew it was worth digging into. If only to find out what the hell a ‘winnow’ is. What it is, according to the press release, is this;
“‘Winnow’ originally referred to the removal of chaff from grain, but it came to be used more broadly to describe the separating out of the unnecessary, the extraction of the good and distinguishing what is true from what is inaccurate or misleading.” Which is so gloriously ironic that we suspect Ferrari might be taking the piss. Because Mission Winnow is a front for selling cigarettes.
Of course Ferrari have long had an association with tobacco, being title-sponsored by Marlboro since the mid-’80s. However when Formula 1 banned tobacco advertising in 2006 after learning that cigarettes may in fact be bad for you, Marlboro’s owners had to find other methods of promoting their cancer-sticks on Ferrari’s racing cars. Cue the ugly barcode thing that appeared on the rear wing or the big white chevron that featured on the engine cover for a number of years, described by doctors as simply ‘subliminal advertising’ for Marlboro.
A public enquiry and probably a quiet word from Bernie Ecclestone saw the barcode dropped after a time, but that hasn’t stopped Marlboro’s owners Philip Morris International and Ferrari continuing to pursue their partnership marketing tobacco to children.
And thus we arrive at the 2019 Scuderia Ferrari SF90, carrying Philip Morris International’s latest “We’re not trying to sell cigarettes, honest” brand message. In fact the Mission Winnow mission statement is so vague and rambling it could have been tweeted by Donald Trump;
“Mission Winnow has a simple goal: drive change by constantly searching for better ways of doing things. And by committing to learning and knowing more, it’s easier to make choices that improve the future for everyone. To make this happen, we’ll get inside the minds of outstanding innovators and change-makers, to see why and how they achieve excellence.”
By ‘achieving excellence’, we can only assume they mean Selling More Cigarettes.
Oh yeah, we’re a Lego blog… this superb Technic recreation of Marlboro’s mobile advertising board is the work of Mane of Eurobricks, making their TLCB debut (sorry about the rant Mane!). Looking wonderfully accurate, Mane’s Scuderia Ferrari SF90 includes front and rear suspension, a working V6 engine, steering, and DRS on the rear wing, a removable engine cover and front wing, and brilliantly accurate ‘Mission Winnow’ (amongst other sponsors) decals.
There’s more to see of Mane’s wonderful creation on Eurobricks (where building instructions are also available), plus there’s an extensive image gallery at Bricksafe. Click the links to take a closer look, and then go on Scuderia Ferrari’s social media accounts and tell them to shove Mission Winnow up their arse.
Of all the teams in Formula 1 right now, Ferrari are the most irritating. With Mercedes-Benz utterly dominant once again, and big names such as McLaren, Williams and Renault simply making up the numbers, it’s down to Scuderia Ferrari to make F1 interesting. They have a genuinely fast car, an enormous budget, and – for reasons known only the Bernie Ecclestone and the mafia – the largest proportion of F1’s revenue regardless of where they place. And yet they’ve been about as good at winning races as Donald Trump is at empathy.
Silly strategical errors and an illogical favouritism of one driver have cost the team not just points and wins, but the fans an interesting race every so often too, with Ferrari now just one of the rest. That said the 2019 Scuderia Ferrari car does look most excellent, as you can see here. This Lego recreation of the SF90 Formula 1 car comes from Noah L (previously ‘Lego Builders‘), and it joins his excellent roster of every Ferrari F1 car from the past few years. Cunning techniques abound and there are lots more images to see at his Flickr album or on MOCpages via the links above, which make for much more interesting viewing than any recent Formula 1 race.
In the mid-1960’s Formula 1 was, perhaps surprisingly, nearly as restrictive technically as it is today. Engines had to be just 1.5 litres or less, which meant they were often comically smaller than those available to the general public. In 1965 the teams requested more power, and to their almost complete surprise the governing body responded by doubling the allowed engine capacity for 1966. We can’t image the FIA being that responsive today…
The Three Litre era of Formula 1 was born as the existing teams scrabbled to take advantage of the new regulations. Ferrari were lucky, having a larger V12 engine available to them from their sports car racing programme, which they modified to keep within the maximum 3000cc allowed and shoved in the back of their F1 chassis. It was a bit of bodge-job though, being heavy and down on torque, and thus the resulting ‘312’ racer wasn’t a Championship winner, taking only three race wins from thirty-eight starts.
With limited success the 312 is sadly most famous for the tragedy that struck Lorenzo Bandini in the 1967 Monaco Grand Prix. On the 82nd lap Bandini caught the guardrail whilst entering the Marina and his car overturned, rupturing a fuel line as it did so. The shower of sparks ignited the car, and with the straw bales lining the track also catching fire Bandini was trapped in the inferno. Marshalls managed to pull him from the car, but he died in hospital a few days later.
Ferrari continued to race the 312 with little success for several more years, with no money to develop a new car and the Cosworth DFV engine used by many other teams winning absolutely everything. Eventually Enzo Ferrari sold a stake of his business to FIAT, and in 1970 used the money to develop a new purpose-built flat-12 engine for Formula 1 racing, finally returning the team to a race winning position.
The 312 was quickly forgotten, but whilst it certainly wasn’t one of Ferrari’s more successful designs, it was – as you can see here – surely one of their most beautiful. The impeccable Model Team replica of the 312 shown in these images comes from Andre Pinto, who has captured every detail of the 312’s the suspension, interior, bodywork, and the (spectacular) V12 engine to create one of the finest classic Formula 1 cars ever built in Lego form.
There’s more to see of Andre’s beautifully photographed 1967 Ferrari 312 at both his Flickr album and at the Eurobricks discussion forum. Take a look via the links above, and if you’d like to hear what that slightly bodged 3.0 V12 sounds like, take a listen here.
We’re only at the mid-way break in the 2018 Formula 1 season and it’s already more interesting than the last few seasons put together (which still isn’t that interesting, but it’s a start). The arrival of the ‘halo’ and slightly laxer penalties (thankfully) were the only changes versus 2017, but such consistency allows teams to make progress, and gosh was that needed.
Years of Mercedes-AMG domination has, maybe, come to an end, as Scuderia Ferrari have at last got their act together and turned out a car that’s really quite good. Sadly Sergio Marchionne, Ferrari’s chairman, died this summer aged just 66, but what better way to celebrate his work than with a Championship win.
This is the car that Scuderia Ferrari and the whole of Italy hope will be able to take the Constructor’s Championship away from Mercedes-Benz, the SF71H. Powered by a 1.6 litre V6 with both an electrically driven turbocharger and an energy recovery system (as per the regulations) the SF71H produces arguably the most power of any engine on the current grid, allowing Sebastian Vettel to take four victories so far.
This stunning recreation of Ferrari’s 2018 title contender comes from previous bloggee Noah_L (aka Lego Builders) who, like the real teams competing in Formula 1, has heavily updated his 2017 car to meet the 2018 regulations. Modern Formula 1 aero is a mighty difficult thing to recreate in any form, let alone Lego, but Noah has done a superb job replicating the Ferrari’s incredible bodywork.
There are loads more images available to view the ingenious methods Noah has used to construct his model at his Flickr photostream and on MOCpages – click the links to take a look at how it’s done!
This is the four-time Championship winning Ferrari 312T, shown here in its earliest configuration from 1975, and it’s one of the greatest Formula 1 car designs of all time. Powered by Ferrari’s proven flat-12 engine the 312T was not turbocharged as per many of its rivals, despite the ‘T’ in the name. That ‘T’ in fact stood for ‘Transverse’, denoting the gearbox layout, making the 312T the first Formula 1 car to use the design.
The result was fantastic handling, and whilst the newer turbo-engines in rival cars of the time made huge power it was often at the expense of reliability, meaning their straight-line advantage often came to nought. Ferrari’s handling edge was so good they raced the 312T for six years, evolving the design over that time to meet with changing regulations, before the car was finally replaced in 1981.
This incredible replica of Niki Lauda’s championship-winning 1975 Ferrari 312T comes from race-car-building-legend Luca Rusconi aka RoscoPC. Developed from an earlier model featured here last year, Luca has updated his 312T with the latest LEGO parts, and the model comes complete with beautifully authentic-looking period decals, working steering, suspension, and a faithful recreation of the famous flat-12 engine.
There’s a whole lot more to see of Luca’s stunning Ferrari 312T at his Flickr album via the link above, plus you can learn how Luca creates his amazing historic racing cars like this one in his Master MOCers interview by clicking here.
Two seconds. And Scuderia Ferrari have changed four wheels and tyres. That’s less time than it took you to read this sentence.
Suggested by a reader this neat pit stop scene showing the world’s fastest mini-figure pit crew at work comes from Master MOCer Andrea Lattanzio aka Norton74, and there’s more to see on Flickr. But be quick!
The LEGO Company have been busy lately. Hot on the heels of their largest set ever, the 7,500 piece Ultimate Collector Series Millennium Falcon, LEGO’s expert model-makers have reminded us what a really big LEGO model looks like.
This is a life-size replica of Ferrari’s 2017 race-winning Formula 1 car, the Scuderia Ferrari SF70H. Built from 349,911 LEGO bricks, the SF70H contains forty-seven times more pieces than the 75192 Millennium Falcon set, and took a team of expert designers and builders 750 hours to complete.
Expect to see more of LEGO’s life-size Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1 car throughout the year, and in the meantime you can check out a time-lapse of the monumental build process via the video below.
The pig-nosed driver of this Ferrari 312 isn’t taking any prisoners with that move. Under Bernie Ecclestone’s helm Formula 1 would see said combatant confined to the pits for ‘causing a collision’, but this is 1967, and rules were for sissies.
The car the Ferrari has swiped has appeared here at TLCB before, a Brabham BT24, and it’s now pictured alongside the latest build by Flickr’s Pixel Junkie in this wonderfully nostalgic Formula 1 scene.
It’s Brabham that went on to win the 1967 Formula 1 World Championship, despite having a slower car than the Lotus of the time, whilst Ferrari finished a lowly fifth. Ferrari may have lost the battle in ’67, but it is they who won the war, with Brabham fading into history whilst the prancing horse has gone on to win almost twice as many titles as any other team.
Being British we prefer the outcome in ’67 though, so we’ll leave this post with a picture of the Brabham BT24 rightfully back in front of the Ferrari 312, and you can us find at Pixel Junkie’s photostream feeling patriotic.
After a few years in some decidedly un-Ferrari-esque positions, Scuderia Ferrari are now back at the sharp end of Formula 1. Whether or not you’re a fan of the prancing horse, it is most definitely a Good Thing that F1 finally has a challenger to Mercedes-AMG.
This is the car that has returned Ferrari to the top step of the podium, the beautiful SF70H. With the aero rules relaxed a bit this year F1’s designers finally have a bit more freedom to create some interesting shapes, in doing so adding variety both to the grid and to the race results. The door has barely shut behind Bernie Ecclestone on his way out and the sport is already more interesting.
This wonderful Lego replica of the 2017 Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1 car comes from previous bloggee Noah_L, one half of the duo ‘LegoBuilders’, and he’s recreated the complicated aero-channelling shape beautifully in brick form. The car also features removable front and rear wings and engine cover, under which is an accurate V6-Hybrid power-plant.
There’s are lots more stunning images to see at the Ferrari SF70H album at Noah’s photostream – make the jump via the link in the text above – and you can see the model on MOCpages by clicking here.
We may only be four months into the year, but we’re pretty sure we’ve found our favourite creation of 2017 already…
This breathtakingly beautiful scene comes from Michel Van den Heuvel aka Start Bricking on Flickr, and it is -of course – Scuderia Ferrari’s 1950s workshop, recreated wonderfully in mini-figure scale.
Inside Michel has taken care of every detail, from tools to trophies, rubber to race cars, nothing is missing, and it’s all been thoughtfully replicated in miniature from our favourite Danish plastic.
Outside the workshop and underneath some stunning brick-built lettering are a trio of historic Scuderia Ferrari Formula 1 racing cars, complete with a superb Fiat team transporter ready to take the cars to their next race.
Michel hasn’t stopped with Formula 1 either, as Ferrari’s legendary endurance racers and sports cars have also been exquisitely recreated in Lego form.
There’s a whole lot more to see of Michel’s incredible build at his Flickr photostream by clicking here, and if anyone from LEGO is reading this; please make this an official set. You know you want to!
The finest brick-built livery ever? If not it’s a sure top three. This brilliant Iveco Scuderia Ferrari transporter from the 2008 F1 season is the work of Ryan Link of Flickr, and it has some of the most intricate brick-work we’ve ever seen. The whole truck opens up too, with a double-deck car ramp, sliding tool storage and a flip-up awning. See more via the link above.
Formula 1 – po-faced, over regulated, and completely devoid of originality – needs a kick in the ass. TLCB debutant Gamabomb may have the answer. Or maybe not, but it’s fun to imagine! This is his ‘Ferrari SF48-0’ built for the Mecha Racing League, and it’s a wonderfully pointless thing. More like this please interwebs! Check it out on Flickr at the link above.
Kimi Raikkonen is one of the sport’s more… er, unusual characters, but there’s no doubting his racing talent. Back when Ferrari were the team to beat he took the F2007 to the World Championship, earning his sole title. Nathaniel L has rebuilt Kimi’s winning Ferrari and published it to Flickr with stunning photography. See all the beautiful photos via the link above.
This is the latest work of racing car genius Bob Alexander and it is, put simply, the most utterly beautiful Lego car we’ve ever seen.
First built in 1931, the Alfa Romeo 8C spearheaded the Italians’ assault on all of the major motor races of the 1930s. Bob’s incredible Lego recreation shown here is the 2600 Scuderia Ferrari version from 1933, driven by Italy’s Tazio Nuvolari and France’s Raymond Sommer. In their hands the 8C won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in ’33, adding a third consecutive Le Mans win to Alfa’s trophy cabinet.
The 8C continued to star in Europe’s motor races until 1938, when the outbreak of war halted everything, and pitched previously collaborative nations, including the winning pair of drivers from 1933, against each another in combat.
You may be wondering why there’s a Ferrari shield on the side of the 8C. Well Enzo Ferrari started out by running racing cars for existing manufacturers like Alfa Romeo before deciding to build his own cars after the Second World War. If you want to see where it all started for Ferrari, this car is that moment.
The Alfa Romeo 8C is therefore one of the most special racing cars ever made, and Bob’s astonishing Lego recreation is a wonderfully fitting tribute to one of the world’s greats. See all the photos on Flickr via the link above.
