F1's LEGO Spectacle
Formula 1 Drivers Parade in Individual LEGO Minicars at Silverstone Grand Prix
Key Points
All 22 Formula 1 drivers will have their own fully drivable Lego minicars, each color-matched to the driver’s team livery and branded with the driver’s number.
Each minic car uses more than 28,000 LEGO bricks and weighs about 280 kg, with roughly 65 kg of bricks comprising the vehicle; 22 cars were designed and built by a 20-person team over 6,400 hours at Lego’s Kladno factory in the Czech Republic.
The Lego minicars are capable of speeds up to 25 km/h.
A journalist drove a Lego go-kart version of George Russell’s car at Silverstone, with Lego’s go-kart program for the event overseen by Martin Smida, expanding the activation beyond the Miami prototype.
Miami’s 2025 parade featured 10 team-themed Lego cars, a format that drew enormous online attention (around 24 billion views), which helped catalyze the 2026 one-car-per-driver expansion.
Every one of the 22 Formula 1 drivers will ride their own fully drivable LEGO minicar at the 2026 British Grand Prix, set for July 5 at Silverstone. Autosport reports the parade starts 90 minutes before lights out — a major step up from last year's Miami debut, where 20 drivers had to share just 10 cars.
Each car is built from more than 28,000 LEGO bricks, weighs about 280 kg, and can hit 25 km/h. A 20-person team at LEGO's factory in Kladno, Czech Republic spent 6,400 hours building the full fleet of 22 vehicles, according to Crash.net.
Miami's Chaotic Parade Sparked a Bigger Idea
The first LEGO parade ran at the 2025 Miami Grand Prix on May 4. It featured 10 team-themed cars — one shared between every pair of teammates. Drivers immediately turned it into an impromptu race, with some jostling over the wheel and minor brick damage occurring along the way. The chaos was part of the charm.
The Miami edition generated around 24 billion online views, a number LEGO's Chief Marketing Officer Julia Goldin called "wild" and "impossible to ignore," according to Brick Fanatics. That staggering reach convinced both F1 and LEGO to go bigger. One car per driver was the obvious next move.
28,000 Bricks, a Steel Chassis, and Racing Brakes
The Silverstone minicars are a serious engineering effort. Each car has over 28,000 LEGO bricks, but only about 65 kg of the 280 kg total weight is actually bricks. The rest is a steel chassis, an electric motor, and go-kart mechanicals, The Straits Times reported. Martin Šmida, LEGO's Senior Model Production Lead, made sure the cars use proper racing brakes and standard go-kart wheels to handle the Silverstone surface.
Every car is color-matched to its driver's 2026 team livery and branded with the driver's number. The full fleet of 22 cars took a 20-person team 6,400 hours to complete at LEGO's Kladno facility in the Czech Republic. That factory celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2025, according to a LEGO Group press release.
F1 and LEGO Both Win from the Partnership
F1 Chief Commercial Officer Emily Prazer said the Miami parade was "one of the most talked-about moments of the season" and called the Silverstone expansion "an incredible spectacle for fans attending and those watching globally," per MarketScreener. LEGO's Julia Goldin added: "Fans and drivers asked — so now we are delivering."
The strategy serves both sides. F1 gets access to LEGO's younger fanbase to build lifelong viewers. LEGO gets high-profile exposure for its F1 Speed Champions retail line, which LEGO CEO Niels Christiansen credited as a key driver of record revenue in the first half of 2025. Lewis Hamilton called the LEGO parade the "most entertaining" drivers' parade of his career.
Go-Kart Tests and What Comes After Silverstone
Ahead of the parade, journalists got a taste of the action. A reporter test-drove a go-kart version of George Russell's LEGO car at Silverstone, with the kart program overseen by Šmida. Russell himself helped open "Kart Silverstone," a new permanent karting facility at the circuit in April 2026, calling karting and LEGO "where the love for racing starts," according to ITV News.
LEGO and F1 have hinted they will keep the "Big Build" events selective to avoid over-saturation, per The Athletic. But the partnership is already expanding — LEGO has signed on as a sponsor of the F1 Academy junior series for 2026, suggesting the bricks-and-racing combo is far from a one-off gimmick.
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