Lego’s minicars are set to break new ground for the drivers’ parade ahead of the British Grand Prix this Sunday – each driver will have their own go-kart- based car to drive about. It’s quite different than the previous iteration of larger Lego cars that debuted in Miami last year where there was a car per team and there were two drivers in each car.
Last time out, the drivers quickly seized upon the fact they could drive them like slow bumper cars. And since they were representative of the design of an F1 car there was a lot of exposed brickwork.
So several fairly innocuous crashes took place, resulting in and bits falling off of the wings and other areas as a result.
The cars are less like a representation of F1 cars this time around and instead are built around a standard go-kart chassis with small wheels, onto which has been built a Lego ‘body’ from 28,000 pieces per car. Plus as you’d expect from karts, they have bumpers! So as a result we’re not expecting the track to be littered with Lego this time around – probably good from a safety perspective – even if the drivers decide to crash into each other.
The karts have Lego on the steering wheel, but most of the 280kg weight of the karts is a standard chassis including normal pedals, wheels and tyres; the Lego part weighs 65kg.
Like Lego’s other big builds, the cars were developed at its Kladno factory in the Czech Republic and they took 6400 hours to put together. They’re all fairly templated, so a single design replicated 22 times, but they are all (obviously) using different colours to represent team liveries and they all have bespoke driver numbers on the sides and steering wheel. Interestingly, the only Lego branding is on the distinctive super-sized representations of bricks actually made from hundreds of actual Lego bricks themselves.
The Lego cars have been commented on by some of the drivers, with Lewis Hamilton joking that the race could be the “most dangerous part” of the British Grand Prix weekend – and naturally, some have seized upon that quote.
Max Verstappen was less enamoured, saying that drivers “should not look like kids or clowns” and adding that the Lego cars are “not what Formula 1 needs”. I think most F1 fans would say ‘suck it up, just a bit of fun’, but the Lego-F1 tie-up is effectively another commercial activity at a time when drivers probably feel they need to chill out ahead of the Grand Prix.
However, there’s little doubt the fans will enjoy the race and no doubt the ‘race’ will turn into a little bit of extra competition ahead of the main race. Let’s hope Silverstone has the sweepers at the ready at least. But whatever happens, Verstappen’s comments have probably made the venture worth it already from Lego’s perspective.
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