LEGO Speed Champions 2023 McLaren Formula 1 Race Car

Lego Speed Champions, famous for its trailblazing building techniques and part usage, infamous for it overwhelming numbers of stickers. The recent March 1st wave brought the shining example of this theme’s modern ideology: set 76919 “McLaren Formula 1 Race Car.” Personally, I have never owned a speed champions set before this, I’m not an F1 fan, but I’m going in relatively open minded and excited to see what this set offers.

Overview

Once completed, it just feels necessary to stop and marvel the technical achievement of this set, it so perfectly Lego-fies a complex real-world design. But no set is without it’s ups and downs, so, let’s take a deeper dive.

Building experience & techniques

I feel like saying the stickers were disruptive to the flow of the build would be like saying that water is wet. But 26 stickers for 245 pieces – in other words, more than 10% of the part count – that is a nock against what was actually a wonderful building experience.

The Lego maths that has taken place to ensure every panel lines up and sits flush whilst remaining accurate is astonishing. The highlights for me are: the SNOT (studs not on top) technique for the side panels – it’s just so incredibly satisfying – and the use of Lego spoons recoloured in black for wing mirrors. The superhero action pose piece for the halo support is also interesting as well. I love the gaming controller for the steering yolk and the ski for the rear fin.

Accuracy

Being a Lego star wars fan, I’m used to sacrifices being made to accuracy to accommodate Lego’s construction quality standards. So I’m left wondering, where have they been made here? I saw the set before the real life vehicle, and I was left speechless when comparing to the model to its real world counterpart. This is where the sticker count serves the set well, with all the appropriate sponsorships covered, from ‘deWalt’, to ‘Cisco’, with even some really quite cool ‘Chrome’ logo hubcaps. A relatively new part included here is the tread-less tyres, gone are the days of every Lego car featuring a wet weather load out, now we can get the more prevalent wheel design as commonplace. The intricate shaping of the sides is also captured perfectly. If there was a couple of niggles, firstly it would be that the spoiler is far to thick and not mounted high enough above the cars body – still a whole lot better than the 6 wide cars used to be. Also, where the minimal prints are, the orange is not opaque enough, leaving them not only not matching the vehicle, but also feeling it of place within the context of the Lego model itself.

Play features

I mean, the wheels spin, and the driver sits in the seat? Anything non-essential has been stripped out in order to accommodate the high levels of detail and accuracy.

Minifigure

The singular included minifig is, to put it simply, dull. Not because there’s just one – any more might have felt unnecessary and distracted from the model – the true detriment is the limited graphic design work. It is as bare-bones as possible, feeling more like an early 2000s figure, rather than matching the high level of details we’ve come to expect in the last few years. I feel the orange needs another layer of print for the proper opacity, and maybe a couple of fold marks would have raised visual interest. However, if I can say one good thing, they McLaren logo on the helmet exceeds quality expectations, making this piece likely highly desirable.

Conclusion

So, after coming into this with expectations developed from word of mouth, I can honestly say that I am blown away by this. It is the absolute poster-child for everything speed champions can and should be, and there has been a clear development from the six-wide system Formula 1 cars. If this set became the base for every Lego Formula 1 going forward, I wouldn’t even be slightly annoyed, fan of F1 or otherwise.