Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will race with the designs of their newly released McLaren special edition Lego helmets in Formula 1’s Monaco Grand Prix.

As part of the celebrations to mark McLaren’s 1000th grand prix, the duo will adopt the colours they have created from Lego’s latest partnership venture with McLaren.

The plan to race in the Lego colours, revealed during a special event in the Monaco harbour on Wednesday, has had to be in the works for more than two years due the long lead time it takes to create the models sets.

The designs for both drivers are split concept – with their traditional colours being matched with a one-off element for the 1000th celebrations. Norris and Piastri both helped work with Lego to come up with the final versions.

Norris said: “It was a pretty cool project to do with Lego, and I’m excited we are one of the very few people that have been able to do it.”

As well as enjoying being involved in the project, Piastri said one of the best things for him was having his own figurine at the end of it.

“It's not every day you get to say you have got your own Lego figurine,” he said.

“As F1 drivers we get some pretty cool stuff that not many people have, but Lego figurines...it looks like me! It's got flip flops or thongs, it’s got a T-shirt. And the hair is pretty much perfect as well!”

A two-year planning process

The unique way that things have been done – with the Lego helmets being released for general sale at the same time as the 1000th GP that they will be raced in – meant that decisions on the designs had to be made long ago due to the long lead times needed to create the model kits.

Furthermore, the timescale was impacted by the fact that making a round helmet out of square bricks was never going to be a straightforward project.

Piastri said: “Obviously making a helmet out of Lego bricks is pretty tough, because Lego bricks are not very round. So there was a lot of work that went into that, and then trying to translate that onto a round object, the actual helmets, was pretty challenging as well. But it's pretty much a like for like translation.”

This is why Lego had to green light the project as long ago as 2024 – so it could get things ready in time for this weekend.

Lego Group’s chief product & marketing officer, Julia Goldin said: “Our product development times are about two years – and that was especially true for helmets because they are a different form.

“So, there were certain things that we had to create from an engineering perspective that were different from the usual Lego brick form in order to make them look as authentic as possible.

“And it’s unique [the real helmets being a copy of the Lego helmets]. In most cases we have to follow [the real thing], because of our timelines and because of how deliveries or costs change. But in this particular case McLaren also said we will do this together, so we did it together.”

McLaren Racing chief marketing officer Louise McEwen said that a two-year planning process - which included a new livery for the race - was a much longer timeline than is usual for special, one-off events.

“We would never have ordinarily designed a car livery that far out,” she said. “The livery kind of came about because we knew we had this incredible opportunity with Lego.

“Normally we're planning liveries a good year or so out, because you have to go through submission processes etc, but this was definitely one where Lego pushed us for the first time to be that far ahead.

"We did it just because we knew it would have great appeal.”