- 10 Lego cars come on the Miami F1 track
- They are each built from around 400,000 Lego bricks
- A team of 26 people took more than 22,000 hours to build the 10 cars
A new type of electric vehicle has just been to the Miami Grand Prix before the Formula 1 race on Sunday: 10 fully conducting racing cars built almost entirely outside Lego.
Large tailor -made constructions – one for each of the 10 F1 teams – are close to 1: 1 with their F1 counterparts. They were built from 400,000 LEGO bricks each and powered by an 8 kW electric motor, which allows them to reach speeds of 20 km / h (about 12 MPH).
The only non -LEGO elements are the engine, the rims and the wheel tires (which each came from their respective and Pirelli F1 teams for authenticity), the steering wheel (although it is decorated with LEGO) and the steel frame fixing all these elements.
In addition, glue and bolts keep the bricks and frame together.
Otherwise, the designers and engineers behind the constructions told me that they wanted it to be something that a child (with enough Lego bricks) could build at home, or perhaps build a smaller version using fewer bricks and LEGO technical engines that can lead to a more manageable scale.
Built
The team behind the Big Builds F1 explained that each car is based on its respective LEGO Champions Speed ensemble, exploded from figurine on a human scale. The only changes to the LEGO design were to incorporate the space for two passengers rather than one and replace the elements stuck by the same details built from bricks (such as the brand and the logos decorating each vehicle).
Once the external lego design has been decided, engineers had to determine how a steel frame and an engine would be incorporated to make it move.
“We are Lego, so our creations are still first bricks,” they explained. “So we created the LEGO design, then built a frame design and engine that would adapt inside the Lego rather than the reverse.”
Apparently, their only major challenge with this brick brick approach was how to run the front wheels, given the tight space that the steel frame had to move. They were forced to propose a new approach to their previous Lego Big Big constructions, but once it was resolved, they had left for the races.
The project was an important work of love.
The solid design team of 26 people spent more than 22,000 hours combined working on the cars of the Lego Kladno factory located in the Czech Republic, and it was their first time on so many cars at once in a tight period.
“We had about eight months to build the 10 cars, this is the moment when we could take one.”
But about 4 million bricks later (which represent about two thirds of the weight of each Big Build of 1,500 kg), they said that seeing the 10 cars together for the first time in Miami “was really worth it”.
