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F1 and LEGO Confirm 22-Driver Minicar Parade At Silverstone

The planned pre-race lap will put fan spectacle and F1’s commercial push up against visible driver unease over marketing demands.

Overview

  • Formula 1 and the LEGO Group have finalised a drivers’ parade at Silverstone in which every one of the 22 drivers will each take a lap in a custom, fully drivable LEGO minicar.
  • The drivers’ parade, scheduled for Sunday, will be livestreamed by Formula 1 and uses a fleet built at LEGO’s Kladno factory that required about 6,400 hours, 20 staff, over 28,000 bricks per car and a roughly 25 km/h top speed.
  • High-profile stars publicly questioned the stunt, with Lewis Hamilton expressing reluctance and Max Verstappen saying the format makes drivers look like “kids or clowns,” even as teams and organisers say the parade is part of the official pre-race programme and will go ahead.
  • Reporting has linked some driver resistance to a behind-the-scenes dispute over unpaid marketing and media obligations, raising broader tensions about how many promotional commitments top drivers are asked to fulfil.
  • The activation builds on last year’s Miami LEGO parade that devolved into collisions and scattered bricks, a safety and optics precedent that organisers say they have considered while staging a bigger, televised version at Silverstone.