The inside story of how LEGO built 10 life-size F1 cars used in the Miami Grand Prix drivers parade

It can take a lot to impress a Formula One driver. These supremely-skilled athletes live a lifestyle most can only dream of. But when they were presented with life-size LEGO models of the cars they drive for 24 races on the F1 calendar, in an instant they were transported back to their childhood and couldn’t hide the delight on their faces.

LEGO’s partnership was announced back in October 2024 at the Las Vegas Grand Prix and it’s not the first time they’ve built full-scale cars that are able to drive. Lando Norris became the first F1 driver in history to drive a car fully built out of LEGO when he took a Mclaren P1 supercar made entirely out of bricks for a lap around Silverstone. But this project was unlike anything LEGO had ever undertaken, 10 full-size Formula One cars that could be driven, with space for two drivers.

Each car is a scaled up version of the LEGO Speed Champions range, available for the public to purchase, and senior designer Jonathan Jurion admitted it was a shock when the brief was put on his table.

“I've got the brief on the table, I was like, gosh, 10 cars,” he told SPORTbible. “You know, we usually do one. at a time. So, yeah, I think the amount of cars was a pretty big challenge. Also, we're wondering how we're going to do the detailing, you know, the functions and seating two people inside. So I think the start was creating a mock-up of the cockpit and then building everything around it so that would, you know, define the scale and the proportions that we needed.”

The intricately-built cars took eight months to construct, each consisting of around 400,000 LEGO bricks, and required over 22,000 man hours to complete. Built in LEGO’s Kladno factory in the Czech Republic, the builds weighed 1,500kg and powered by a 8Kw electric engine could reach speeds of 20km/h.

The idea to have both drivers from each team in the cockpit posed an interesting challenge to LEGO’s engineering department and with no confirmation over who would be given the role of driver, all cars needed to be designed to accommodate either man behind the wheel.

“That's the magic here,” Marcel Šťastný, senior project manager at LEGO, told SPORTbible. “It's the magic and our designers did a great job because the space of the cockpit in the real Speed Champions cars, we needed to shorten it to make the space inside properly. So we had to do it in a way that respects the shape of the Lego elements, but to manage the space for the two guys. And we have the adjustable panel, with the pedals just to ensure that no matter what person will drive the car, you will fit.”

The LEGO cars featured over 400,000 bricks (Credit:SPORTbible)

It was confirmed that the F1 drivers had not been given the chance to test the cars prior to the drivers parade in Miami and the looks on their faces said it all.

It’s rare to see the drivers so excited to take part in the mandatory parade before the start of the race, multiple drivers were taking selfie videos documenting the chaos from the first minute as all cars vied for the lead. Some dirty tactics particularly from Alpine driver Pierre Gasly left LEGO debris all over the track as cars collided, as documented by the viral video captured by Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton.

Hamilton gave a glowing endorsement at the end of the parade, dubbing it the greatest F1 drivers parade of all-time.

The aftermath of the F1 drivers parade (Credit:SPORTbible)

To make LEGO’s feat even more impressive, every single brick included on the builds can be purchased straight off-the-shelf meaning there is no reason that such impressive creations cannot be recreated in the comfort of your own home.

That is the magic that LEGO’s Chief Product and Marketing Officer Julia Goldin hoped to create with their partnership with F1.

She told SPORTbible: “The LEGO system, everything fits together and we only have one system in play. That's testament to the innovation here because all of this is built with regular LEGO bricks that are in our assortment. When you're building Speed Champions cars, you're going to be building with the same bricks. We inspire a lot of people to build their own creations and this is just another way of saying that anything is possible with a LEGO brick."