Fast Work: Designing the LEGO Group’s new F1 ACADEMY™ racing car (and a LEGO® set to match!)

In January 2025, a team of LEGO® designers faced an unusual challenge: to create a livery for a new racing car, and design a LEGO set to match - at the same time!

Ordinarily, LEGO designers working on car models have an existing vehicle to work from, translating its colours, shape and profile into LEGO brick form. But here there was no template.

A design mission

With the new LEGO Racing team joining the F1 ACADEMY™ series for the first time, the designers were on a mission to develop a distinct look for the full-size racing car that will line up on the grid and also look great in brick form in the palm of a hand.

The LEGO design team members threw themselves into the challenge, workshopping potential designs, producing concept sketches and brainstorming ways of merging the LEGO values of playfulness and creativity with the hi-octane world of the F1 ACADEMY. With only 10 months to go until LEGO Racing’s grand unveiling, they would also need to execute at speeds befitting, well, a race team!

A chance to inspire and champion women’s sport

Design Master Beatrice Amoretti, who led the livery design, saw the project as a chance to champion women’s sports while also inspiring LEGO fans with something new.

“The message needed to be strong and so the visuals needed to be strong as well,” says Beatrice, who assembled the team. “This was a great opportunity to create visibility for women in motorsports through LEGO play and through creative experiences.”

Model designer Maria Jędryszek, responsible for the 1:26 sized LEGO set, was inspired by the range of nationalities and personalities of the drivers, all women aged 16-25: “There’s not one way to ‘drive like a girl’, just as there’s not one way to ‘build like a girl’,” she says.

No blueprint to build from

While Maria faced the unusual challenge of building a model of a car whose final look had not yet been defined, the machine itself did exist though, since all the teams in F1 ACADEMY use the same-spec cars. Maria sourced vehicle designs and blueprints from F1 ACADEMY to familiarize herself with the car’s shape and proportions.

Based on those blueprints, Maria began producing all-white models of the car so that she could refine its shape and build, if not its final appearance, knowing she would need to rework it later once the colours had been finalized.

Although new to the world of F1, Maria quickly became enthralled as she pored over the architecture and mechanics of the cars. “I really got hooked,” she says.

Meanwhile, Beatrice was focussed on developing the LEGO Racing team livery. Noticing that there were no yellow cars on the F1 ACADEMY grid, the team gravitated towards yellow, a signature LEGO shade, together with black, to ensure that LEGO Racing would stand out from the pack. Pink and light blue stripes were added to incorporate the F1 ACADEMY’s own colour scheme.

For a dash of LEGO humour, they included a checkered flag design that appears to be peeling away at the edges due to the race car’s speed.

In the end the team felt confident they had found the bold and striking look they’d been looking for, says Beatrice.

“I hope there’ll be a butterfly effect,” says Maria. “When young girls see women racing these amazingly fast cars, they’ll see there are truly no limits to what you can do.”