SILVERSTONE, UK — When Formula One brought 10 full-size, drivable Lego cars to the Miami Grand Prix for the pre-race drivers’ parade, few could have predicted the move’s success.

“The fact the cars were moving was a huge surprise, but then what the drivers started to do when they got into the cars, that was even more surprising,” Julia Goldin, Lego’s chief product and marketing officer, told The Athletic in an interview. “Because we told them, ‘Don’t race!’”

F1 drivers being F1 drivers, they of course ended up racing and crashing into one another, despite being limited to a maximum speed of 12mph. The footage went viral.

F1 and Lego announced a partnership in Las Vegas last year, which included launching an extensive product range. A car from the Speed Champions range, which includes all 10 F1 teams, apparently sells every two seconds. But Miami drivers’ parade action proved such a huge hit, it left fans to wonder what might be next.

So after Lego cars, now come Lego trophies. At Sunday’s British GP, as F1 celebrates 75 years since the world championship started at Silverstone in 1950, the top three finishers of the race, plus the winning team, will be presented with full-size trophies made entirely out of Lego.

How the trophies were made

The actual winner’s trophy for the British Grand Prix is the iconic, solid-gold Royal Automobile Club Trophy. This will still be presented on the podium to the race winner along with the Lego trophy. It was the key source of inspiration to the designer of the Lego version, Samuel Liltorp Johnson.

Johnson is a Lego creative lead, who normally designs model sets so large that families can build together, and has worked on projects such as Lego’s ‘Doctor Who’ editions. He was approached back in April — before the Miami drivers’ parade — with the task of making a trophy for the British GP.

His initial thought was to make the trophy a big, gold Lego brick, only to quickly change plans to tap into the race’s history instead.

“It’s the 75th birthday, so I thought, what if we tell a heritage story?” Liltorp Johnson said. “And the one constant in all of British motorsport is that RAC Trophy. And that was just like, ‘What if we make a trophy inspired by that?’ And this is the result of that inspiration.”

Lewis Hamilton celebrates with the traditional trophy in 2024 (Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

The Lego winners’ trophy isn’t made out of gold, but all of the bricks have been colored with a golden chrome effect. The trophies for second and third places are white, while the constructors’ trophy is black. 

Liltorp Johnson designed and rendered the trophy digitally, with his file comprising 20,000 Lego pieces as he made full use of Lego’s brick inventory and tried different ways to get the shapes and curves he required for a trophy.

Liltorp Johnson was particularly struck by the floral patterns on the real RAC Trophy, so made use of Lego’s brick flower designs. The handles were made out of curved pieces that are normally elements for palm trees or dinosaur tails. But he also wanted to add some Lego “playfulness” to the model. This became the Lego F1 cars on each side and, of course, the classic Lego brick on the very top.

The final design comprises 2,717 bricks, weighs over 2kg and is 23 inches tall. To keep it strong, Lego Technic pieces are used in the middle to serve as its ‘skeleton’. The rest of the bricks are glued together. A team of eight people worked on the models and put in 200 man hours, with each trophy taking approximately one week to build.

As part of his design research, Liltorp Johnson watched numerous F1 podium ceremonies to see what the drivers might do with his trophies after they were presented. “Lewis Hamilton holds it like a baby and George Russell punches it to the sky,” he said, explaining that he’d pick the trophy up and wave it above his head to ensure it stayed together.

One incident that caught his eye was Lando Norris’s champagne bottle smash in Hungary two years ago, which inadvertently knocked Max Verstappen’s porcelain winner’s trophy off the top step and caused expensive damage. “It’s glued to ensure it doesn’t fall apart,” Liltorp Johnson added.

The trophies are the next big moment for F1 and Lego, but Liltorp Johnson knew the spotlight would grow after the Miami drivers’ parade ‘race’. 

“I was in the middle of making this, and that was a ‘no pressure’ moment,” he said. “Now they’ve made this global moment and maybe I have to compete with that. These cars are massive. It was so cool.

“That made me really excited, because you could see how happy the drivers were. It’s Lego directly impacting their enjoyment of those moments.”

The designers used everyday Lego set pieces to build the trophy (via Lego)Will the Lego drivers’ parade return?

The Lego trophies were only revealed one hour before the start of the Silverstone race by design. In Miami, it was only when the drivers’ parade began that people knew the cars could actually be driven.

Goldin said that F1 and Lego would be “selective” in their major marketing projects, as they “need to be unique and surprising.” She also talked up F1 ‘Easter eggs’ they could work on together, such as designing the braking marker boards that have been at points of the tracks in Austria and Silverstone to imitate Lego bricks.

“I think if we did something every week, it would not feel as special,” added Emily Prazer, F1’s chief commercial officer. “It’s about making sure the ideas that we come up with collectively do feel like part of the race weekend and don’t feel like we’ve done it for the sake of it.”

Prazer said the reaction to the Miami drivers’ parade had surpassed F1’s expectations. “It was wild,” she said. According to Goldin, the Lego cars parade generated a collective 24 billion views.

But to keep the element of surprise, Goldin said that if the drivers’ parade was repeated in the future, it would be “not in exactly that form. It has to be something special and different.”

The next major F1/Lego event is planned to take place in Las Vegas, according to Prazer, to mark one year since the partnership announcement. “We’ll do something fun,” she said.

Silverstone’s podium may be just the next step for Lego’s F1 involvement, but for Liltorp Johnson, it will be a career high.

“What am I supposed to do now?” he joked. “Everything’s going to be boring after this, right? I feel like I can really feel when something’s once in a lifetime. If I don’t invest my whole self into this, when am I ever going to get that chance again?

“So that’s what I’ve done. I’ve really just tried to give myself to this and just give it what it deserves.”

(Top image: via Lego)