How Lego built life-size F1 cars for Miami GP driver parade

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — It sounds like a 10-year-old’s wildest dream: Take nearly 400,000 Lego bricks and build a life-size Formula 1 car capable of completing a lap of the Miami Grand Prix circuit.

The ambitious idea came about last year as the Danish company’s senior management was visiting its model production factory in Kladno, Czechia. Tasked with dreaming up ideas to promote Lego’s recently signed partnership with F1, the leadership team had its “what if?” moment.

“We were talking and we were brainstorming together and saying, ‘What could we do with F1 that would be completely epic and beyond anything we’ve done before?'” Julia Goldin, chief product and marketing officer of the Lego Group, told ESPN in Miami. “And so then the team came back and said, ‘Well, what about full-size cars and what about drivable cars?’ So it took a while because, of course, it’s a great idea, but can you really make it happen? But that was very much the process.”

Senior designer Jonathan Jurion and engineering manager specialist Martin Šmida were given the task of making the vision a reality. The goal: accurately reproduce life-size versions of the latest range of Speed Champions Lego F1 cars that not only look faithful to the product on sale in shops but are also capable of completing a full 3.3-mile lap of the Miami International Autodrome during F1’s traditional prerace drivers’ parade.

Lego has a long history of building accurate life-size models of various products for its parks, but up until the F1 project, only one of its full-size cars had been drivable. That’s partly because 400,000 Lego bricks, even when held together with special construction glue, remain somewhat fragile, but also because a drivable car would require a steel-frame chassis, an electric drivetrain, hydraulic brakes and a power steering system.

And then there was another challenge presented by the Miami project: Only one car would be built per team, meaning each model would have to be big enough to accommodate two F1 drivers.

Speaking to ESPN in Kladno earlier this year, Jurion held one of the Speed Champions models in the palm of his hand as he explained the process of scaling the 1/30th toy car up to a life-size construction.

“So we started with this little build, trying to remodel it so it fits two minifigures,” he said. “Obviously a minifigure is not the same proportions as a human, but that was the start.

“We then take that design and try to upscale it, so [the fully built life-size car] is a 30-times upscale of the original model you can buy in shops. And then we try to go piece by piece, design each part and try to make it look as faithful to that as possible.”

In order to keep the build to the correct proportions while accommodating two drivers, the cockpit area was elongated so that one driver could sit between the legs of his teammate. (Who gets to sit up front in each car will be an interesting insight into the dynamics between teammates up and down the grid.)

“So we actually got inspired by an airplane design for two people, so they are sitting in tandem one behind the other,” Jurion said. “They will be pretty cramped in there, but we think that we tried to do the biggest space possible for them to be inside.”

Šmida, who was in charge of the construction of the car’s mechanical underpinnings, is proud of an additional feature to make the ride slightly more comfortable for the driver at the controls.

“We have the space for two, and because we don’t know if the driver is smaller or taller, we have movable pedals,” he said. “These pedals have the possibility to move 10 centimeters back and 10 centimeters forward.”

Unlike Lego sets sold in shops, there was no instruction manual when the project first started. Working with his team of designers, Jurion used special software to map out the assembly of the bricks in layers to create the right shapes to mimic F1 body parts while incorporating specific team sponsor names in Lego form.

“We build bricks in the software as you would build bricks at home, but this is a different scale, so we lay them down layer by layer, like you would build a house, for example,” Jurion explained. “And then when we’re finished, we prepare a manual, like you get in a set in the shop, for our builders. And they go layer by layer, gluing the bricks until we have these wonderful cars.

“We build the models in separate chunks, so the engine cover is one part, the halo is another, the nose is another part, and then it gets all assembled together.”

The wheels and tires of the cars, on loan from the teams and F1 tire supplier Pirelli, are the only visible parts of the construction not made from genuine Lego bricks. Even the steering wheel has an outer casing assembled from Lego, complete with switches and dials to look like the real thing.

The 400,000 bricks alone weigh 1,000 kilograms, while the non-Lego parts, including the chassis supporting the structure, add an additional 500 kg. In total, that adds up to 1,500kg — or just under two times the weight of a real F1 car.

Šmida’s primary responsibility was to make sure the finished cars were up to the task of completing the lap under their own power. The chassis not only had to be strong enough to support a ton of bricks (quite literally) but also house an electric motor and drivetrain capable of powering the whole construction to a maximum speed of just under 13 mph — a number roughly in line with the speed of the flatbed truck used for standard driver parades at other circuits.

In total, the project required 3,000 hours of development time and a further 19,000 hours of assembly time to build all 10 cars.

After the drivers’ parade in Miami, the models will go on a worldwide tour so both Lego and F1 fans can marvel at them. Perhaps the hardest task of all for Goldin and her leadership team is to think of a way to up the game for Lego’s next F1 project.

“That’s the question that everybody is asking,” Goldin said. “And we’re asking ourselves that question.

“But, you know, one of the things that we pride ourselves on is to never let our imagination be in any way constrained by what is considered possible. It’s always: Let’s make the impossible possible. And I’m confident that the creativity of our teams will bring another, even more challenging idea to the table.”

Source: espn.com