I’ve seen Lego’s F1 Academy set – and the car that’ll actually race next year

Lego’s motorsport lineup will shift into another gear next year, when it launches the first Lego Speed Champions F1 Academy set – and goes racing for real, entering a Lego-branded car in the women’s single-seater series.

Both the 201-piece Speed Champions lego set and the real-world car will wear the same livery, which was created by the Lego design team. The checkered pattern and large amount of yellow are clear nods to the company, while the other colours were inspired by the F1 Academy logo. The set will also include a long-haired minifigure wearing the team’s racing suit.

I was in Las Vegas to see F1 Academy director Susie Wolff and Lego’s marketing director Julia Goldin reveal the new partnership, and announce that 20-year old Dutch driver Esmee Kosterman – the Wild Card entry in Round 5 of this year’s F1 Academy season – will be behind the wheel. She’ll drive under the #32 racing number, picked to signify the year Lego’s creator first started making toys.

Wolff told me having a Lego version of an F1 Academy car was a “pinch me moment” that would help more girls see that there’s a place for them in motorsport. It’ll join the existing Speed Champions range, which includes sets for each of the 10 teams currently on the F1 grid.

The F1 Academy is a spec series based on Formula 4–level cars, which posed some challenges for Lego’s design team. With slimmer, shorter proportions to an F1 car, they had to repurpose pieces like lamp holders and brackets to keep the brick version faithful. It also uses two different wheel sizes, just like the real car. The designers worked on the toy and real-world racer liveries in tandem, even reworking the minifigure’s racing suit so it would work when scaled up to human size.

Kosterman said she’s aiming for podiums in her first full F1 Academy season, and that she can’t wait to give the toy car to the younger girls she helps train in karting – the discipline she started in herself, aged 6, before eventually working up the ranks to single seaters.

The Speed Champions F1 Academy set is up for pre-order today, and will go on sale on March 1st, just in time for the start of the 2026 Formula One race season.

This week’s announcement comes twelve months on from when Lego introduced its F1 range and kicked off a year of involvement with the pinnacle of motorsport. It outfitted the grid with fully drivable Lego F1 cars in Miami for the driver parade, and made a life-size Lego trophy for the British Grand Prix to mark 75 years of F1.

This year’s Vegas Grand Prix will see Lego presenting the F1 Academy Race 1 and Race 2 winners with custom-made Lego Botanicals bouquets, made of almost 2000 pieces each and weighing nearly 1kg.

• Related: I became a better builder at Lego House’s epic Masters Academy sessions – and you can too!

Tom Morgan-Freelander Deputy Editor

About

A tech addict from about the age of three (seriously, he's got the VHS tapes to prove it), Tom's been writing about gadgets, games and everything in between for the past decade, with a slight diversion into the world of automotive in between. As Deputy Editor, Tom keeps the website ticking along, jam-packed with the hottest gadget news and reviews.  When he's not on the road attending launch events, you can usually find him scouring the web for the latest news, to feed Stuff readers' insatiable appetite for tech.

Areas of expertise

Smartphones/tablets/computing, cameras, home cinema, automotive, virtual reality, gaming