The LEGO design team behind the new LEGO Racing F1 livery and Speed Champions set open up about the unique challenge of designing a car livery and LEGO set to match.
LEGO Racing was recently announced to be joining the 2026 F1 Academy season; 20-year-old Dutch driver Esmee Kosterman will be the primary pilot for the team. LEGO Design Master Beatrice Amoretti and Model Designer Maria Jędryszek joined forces with a larger team to bring the real-life LEGO Racing livery to the track as well as the tie-in Speed Champions set, 77258 F1 ACADEMY LEGO Race Car.
One goal of the team is to help inspire girls in the world of racing through representation and creativity. Which means the design of the car had to match the optimistic spirit of the team.
“The message needed to be strong and so the visuals needed to be strong as well,” shares Design Master Beatrice Amoretti. “This was a great opportunity to create visibility for women in motorsports through LEGO play and through creative experiences.”
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Beatrice was in charge of assembling the LEGO Racing team — and deciding what the livery would look like. In studying the rest of F1, Beatrice noticed a general lack of yellow on the track, and with the prominence of yellow in the LEGO catalogue (it is the face of the minifigure, after all), it was a natural choice to serve as the base of the livery. The pink and blue highlights were added to match F1 ACADEMY’s colours and fit in while still standing out.
The numbers painted on top of the design are made to look as if they were built with 1×1 tiles, ensuring there’s no doubt as to which team the car belongs to. Thought the big LEGO logos do a lot of heavy lifting in that department, too. There’s even a cheeky Speed Champions logo to help promote the tie-in set.
Design work on the car began in January 2025, so the timeframe for getting the project done was far from generous. This meant that Model Designer Maria Jędryszek didn’t have a lot to go on when starting to design 77258 F1 ACADEMY LEGO Race Car. In fact, she didn’t have much anything to go off except the shape of the car.
This led to her making sketch models only using white elements so that, at the very least, the set could have a shape even if it lacked colour. And it proved an effective strategy — the 1:26 sized replica was easy to complete once the real thing was finalised, all in time for the official announcement of LEGO Racing.
“Celebrate achieving your dreams, no matter who you are, and not letting anyone define what you are or what you are capable of, that’s the message I really wanted to push,” says Maria. “There’s not one way to ‘drive like a girl’, just as there’s not one way to ‘build like a girl.’ I hope there’ll be a butterfly effect. When young girls see women racing these amazingly fast cars, they’ll see there are truly no limits to what you can do.”
To learn more about the LEGO Racing team and its inspiring pilot Esmee Kosterman, click here. And if you’re interested in picking up a copy of 77258 F1 ACADEMY LEGO Race Car, consider doing so via our affiliate links to help support the work we do at Blocks, online and in print.
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