What could beat winning the British Grand Prix? Forget the prestige, money and champagne, the real prize is this year's trophy. This stunning gold-adorned trophy is made from 2,717 Lego bricks to celebrate the 75th anniversary of F1 at Silverstone.
Last year, Lego announced its partnership with Formula 1 ahead of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, and earlier this season, it constructed 10 fully drivable full-size F1 cars for the Miami Grand Prix’s drivers parade. With this build, though, Lego took the prize – or rather, the winners took the Lego prize.
There are four Lego trophies in total, all inspired by the original Royal Automobile Club (RAC) trophy. The Drivers and Constructors models stand at almost 60cm tall and weigh over 2kg, while the 2nd and 3rd place trophies are a little shorter at around 43cm.
Driver-proof design
Samuel Thomas Johnson, the creative at Lego who designed the trophy, told me that the design faced a serious challenge to stop it from falling apart. “It would be the worst if it broke in half or snapped when the drivers held it over their heads,” said Johnson. So while the design is made completely of existing Lego pieces, some extra reinforcements were needed.
“In the centre, I used Lego Technic, so you can lock the pieces together in different directions, to create a kind of spine all the way through [the trophy],” Johnson explained. “Then our model shop in Billund helped me glue it together to be double safe. It’s a very solid item.”
The Lego team even analysed how each of the drivers celebrates, to see what stresses the trophy might have to withstand. “You have Lando, who slams the champagne down and hopefully doesn't smash it. And Lewis Hamilton, he throws the trophy up in the air, like a baby, and catches it,” Johnson explains.
Lego trophy (left), RAC trophy (right)
It's all in the detail
If you look closely, there are some fun details on the trophies that make them uniquely Lego. “We wanted [the trophies] to still have Lego DNA, as well as the F1 and Silverstone stories wrapped into them,” said Johnson. “One of our collectable F1 cars is mounted on the front of the trophy, and on the top is a golden Lego brick.”
The design process started around Easter and has taken over two months to complete. Johnston normally works in Lego’s toy design area in Denmark, rather than the large model shop in the Czech Republic (where the F1 cars were built), so the design process was much more manual. “I still designed it digitally, because it’s a lot of Lego bricks,” said Johnson.
With 2,717 bricks in large trophies and 2,298 bricks in the smaller trophies, it would take around eight hours to put each of these together at home. However, there’s no plan to make this design available to buy… yet.
The next stage?
The question I had to ask, though, is where does Lego go next with its Lego F1 partnership? “I think this is probably not the last time you'll see something [F1] from the Lego Group,” said Johnston. “We’ve had those awesome cars, we have this awesome trophy. Maybe we'll just build a whole track. We could have our own Grand Prix in Billund, and they could come and drive on the plastic track.”
I’d love to see Lego sets of the Grand Prix tracks that you could build and display at home. The Monoco one would be epic for sure, and even Silverstone. For now, though, it’s only the British Grand Prix winners who get to have this Lego trophy in their cabinet.
Lego F1 cars at the Miami Grand Prix
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.