British Grand Prix: Lego trophy to be awarded to podium finishers
SILVERSTONE, England — The top three finishers at the British Grand Prix will be presented with trophies made of Lego on Sunday’s podium at Silverstone.
As part of the Danish company’s partnership with F1, Lego has built trophies inspired by the golden RAC trophy that has been presented to the winner of the British Grand Prix annually since 1973.
Although the traditional trophy will still be awarded to the winner, it is returned to the RAC after the ceremony each year, while the drivers will be allowed to keep the Lego models.
The winner’s trophy stands at 59cm high, weighs 2 kilograms and is made of 2717 bricks. The constructors’ trophy has been built to the same construction but is finished in black as well as gold to emphasise some of the details.
Smaller trophies (43 cm tall) made predominantly of white bricks will be presented to the drivers in second and third.
Made in Billund, Denmark, the four trophies took seven builders to construct over 210 workhours.
The gold bricks on the winner’s trophy have been specially created and are not on sale to the public.
“We didn’t want to present a bright yellow trophy, because we wanted to respect the heritage behind this race and sport,” the trophy’s designer Samuel Liltorp Johnson said.
“So it is inspired by the original RAC trophy that appears here every year, while wanting to celebrate and look to the creativity that is coming out of this sport.
“We’ve added a little bit of Lego flair to it, and you can see that each trophy has a small Lego car attached to it and a cheeky Lego brick on the top as well.”
Although there are no plans to sell replicas of the trophies to the public, avid fans could, in theory, construct their own.
“Everything that you see here, you would be able recreate with the right bricks,” Liltorp Johnson added. “The colour is exclusive to this moment, but you could purchase, if you wanted to, all the bricks that are present in this model.
“So if you wanted to and you were a big Lego fan, you could work out how to do it.”
The individual bricks have been glued together to help strengthen the structure, with the designers aware they may receive rough treatment during the podium celebrations.
Referencing an incident at the 2023 Hungarian Grand Prix when Lando Norris’ exuberant champagne spraying broke a porcelain trophy awarded to race-winner Max Verstappen, Liltorp Johnson explained how the Lego models had been created to be handled like a real trophy on the podium.
“The team has built and glued them together, so we don’t have a disaster with maybe some champagne being slammed down and the trophy smashing on the ground,” he said. “We’ve done our diligence to make sure that they don’t fall apart.
“They are very strong. They are made of a combination of standard Lego bricks and Lego Technic, which is more of an engineering style of Lego building and is really strong. You can combine the two systems together and it has a spine of Lego Technic running all the way through it, so you can actually lift it.”
The trophies are the latest activation in Lego’s partnership with F1 following the use of life-size Lego cars on the drivers’ parade at the Miami Grand Prix in May.
Source: espn.com