I bought this Speed Champion set today. Slicks. Let me not get ahead of myself. The box art is what draws my attention to this set. I remember growing up watching F1 (Indy Cars) with my Dad. The price was above normal for a set this size @ about 12 cents per piece but I really liked it, so you're welcome Lego for the extra money. The livery colours are fantastic, and I love the orange/ black combo. Yes, it includes a sticker sheet but also has some nice printing on other pieces. The steering wheel is great, and I think the spoons are a brilliant choice for the mirrors. The part that makes this set special is the use of the slick tyres. I love slicks, which makes this set feel more natural. Building instructions are simple to follow, and another great set was added to the Racing Champion lineup. Highly recommended to everyone.

LEGO has produced several Formula 1 cars in the popular Speed Champions line, and 76919 2023 McLaren Formula 1 Car is the latest. This set is based on McLaren's 2023 car, the MCL60, and is the first Speed Champions F1 car from the new aero regulations introduced in 2022, which vastly changed the shape of the car. Has LEGO managed to capture the shape and proportions of the MCL60? That's what I'll be looking at today.

First, I'll start with the Minifigure. The driver is dressed in a full McLaren race suit with accurate colors from last season. However, unlike previous Speed Champions F1 drivers, the sponsors are unfortunately absent on this minifig which is a shame. The driver comes with a printed orange helmet with the McLaren logo printed on top, which looks excellent. The visor is transparent blue, which is a nice change from the usual clear or transparent black visors. The driver comes with a reddish brown hairpiece which I think looks more like Oscar Piastri than Lando Norris.

The building experience is a lot of fun on this one. There are studs in every direction, lots of very intricate sections, and some very cool parts usage. The sidepods are assembled using studs on the side construction, but the floor of the car has the studs upside down. Unfortunately, this set uses a ton of stickers (including two on printed pieces!), so if you hate stickers, this might not be the set for you.

The car itself looks spectacular. LEGO has executed the complex shape and proportion of the ground effect cars perfectly. The bright orange and dark azure colour scheme absolutely pops against the black and looks brilliant. The liberal use of stickers means that the car has all of the accurate sponsors, which looks perfect compared to the real car. The vape sponsors were obviously omitted on the sidepods in favor of McLaren branding, which is understandable, but apart from that, all of the correct sponsor logos are there and in the right places. The halo looks brilliant, and uses a flexible hose piece that wraps around the cockpit of the car. Lifting it up allows room for a single minifigure. The steering wheel is a game controller in dark pearl gray, but unlike previous LEGO F1 cars, this piece is printed! This print looks excellent and I am happy to see they have finally printed the steering wheel.

Above the cockpit is the airbox and camera pod. The camera pod is now printed and looks splendid, with an accurate black and yellow color scheme. The yellow camera pod is used on Lando Norris' car, so it is a shame driver numbers (and a black camera) are not included in this set. Black LEGO spoons are used to represent the mirrors, which I think is brilliant part usage! The Pirelli tires are also brand new parts, with the yellow stripes representing the Medium tire in F1. The wheel inserts are 2x2 round dishes, printed with the Google Chrome colors which look great.

Going towards the front of the car, the nose is a printed piece which looks good, but unfortunately the print is not as bright as the surrounding stickers and orange parts. This is becoming a frequent problem with LEGO printed parts and I hope it is fixed soon. The front wing is a very different shape to the previous generation of Formula 1 cars represented in 76909 and I think the shape and proportions are executed very well. It matches the real car perfectly and I could not be more pleased with this design, which is much sturdier than the previous Mercedes design.

The sidepods and engine cover look fantastic as well thanks to some pieces I have not seen before. The 1x2 angled tile and 1x3 curved slope with angle both appear to be new pieces, and the sidepods look perfect thanks to these parts. The engine cover looks equally brilliant and uses some studs on the side construction. The engine cover pieces are printed, however, the printed pieces both have stickers! This is bizzare to me and I'm not sure why they didn't just print the whole piece. Nevertheless, this section looks excellent compared to the real MCL60.

I was worried from official images that the rear wing would be too bulky, but the size and proportions are actually just right. The wing features several curves and slopes to represent the curvy nature of the ground effect cars, and the DRS activation mechanism is represented with a short bar piece. The rain light, which is also used to show when the driver is harvesting energy for their ERS, is represented with a transparent red 1x2 tile on the back.

Overall, this set is absolutely spectacular and is by far the most accurate Speed Champions F1 car to date. The price of $26.99 seems steep for a Speed Champions car, but given how great the build is and how incredible the car looks, I would still recommend this to any F1 fan or LEGO fan who wants a fun, intricate build with some cool details.

This 8-wide mini-monster is a nice addition to the Speed Champions subtheme. This car has a personality embedded in its orange slopes and its black beauty.

Building this set was actually quite hard for a 9+ set due to the various interesting and new techniques. One technique that intrigued me was the halo held up by a pointed brick. It used a bendy plastic orange tube that felt like it would snap when being bent (as shown in the instructions), but to my relief it didn't. Even if you like challenging builds this set is very weird (and surprisingly harder than many sets) due to the techniques.

Parts

The sleek design of this set makes some parts come off pretty easily though. For example, the curved slope part with the DeWalt logo has only one stud connected to it and is pretty weak. That is the reason that I have deducted a star from Playability (more coming up)

The front bumper has a good stickered design with many curved slopes and tiles that turn at various angles. It is only connected by 4 studs to the rest of the car so it falls off if you're not careful (not very sturdy for play). A similar problem occurs to the back section, only connected by two studs. The car is quite low and appears to be touching the ground along with the tyres, but no friction occurs. (it literally looks like 1mm off the ground)

Something that may be my favourite thing in the set is the tyres and wheels in this set, which are both printed and branded.

Speaking of branding, the Stickers in this set are plentiful, but this is due to the high amount of sponsorships on Formula 1 cars. I tip my hat to the LEGO designers for printing a few of them, to save the trouble of stickers.

I think that Speed Champions would greatly improve from using actual reflective pieces for the side mirrors, though.

A video game controller is used as a speedometer, which is quite clever.

Playability: I think that the playability of this set isn't great for a Speed Champions set. The wheels are quite high-friction even though many people play with the cars on the carpet, which further detriments the playability. However, the driver minifig has a black wrench that takes the tyres off which makes me give a star back to this set's playability rating, since you can do repairs.

The minifig is quite cool and has a basic hair piece, but I think it works quite well.

He doesn't have branding on his clothes (unlike on the car, or on real F1 drivers) except for the McLaren logo. He wears a basic grey tracksuit with orange stripes and also comes with a printed helmet to use when driving, with a cool transparent blue visor. (Safety first!!)

Should you buy this?

£21 is not a great price, but this set comes with unique printed parts which are harder to manufacture, so I understand why this set is expensive, hence my 3/5 value for money.

Finally, a comparison of the real car vs. LEGO

Bought this set as I recently got pulled back in the F1 world after a 15-year hiatus. I have several Speed Champions sets, and it felt only fitting to finally get a Formula 1 set as well, even though McLaren was never my team really, especially since they became orange. Anywho.

The built was interesting, given the size and scale of things, I really cannot complain here. The solution for the cars halo is not quite to my liking, but I don't have a better solution either, so it is getting a pass. As for playability, I am pushing forty, for me this thing boils down to the enjoyment of the built and the display of the finished thing. So, in that regard, highest marks.

However, I do have an issue with the stickers. First of all, there are a lot of them. There are a couple of printed pieces too, which is confusing. Why not be consistent all the way and use stickers everywhere, 3 more certainly will not make a difference. Also, I had to apply stickers to pieces that were already printed, so I ask again, why not be consistent? But fine, whatever. Second, and this is worse, the stickers were not cut properly. Some came off right, some came off incomplete, as in small bits of the sticker got stuck on the base paper. Luckily, the piece and the stickers were of the same colour, so when I got a sticker with some transparent patches, those got filled in by the base colour of the piece itself. The flaws are still visible, but you really have to look closely to see the small spots of shade differences. I do not know if this was an isolated incident or if this is generally valid flaw for the model, but it was not nice.

I do hope that they release models from the other F1 teams as well, would be cool to have a F1 lineup on its own.

I personally think this is one of the best Speed Champions sets that Lego has ever made maybe even the best one they ever made. I love the updated wheels and front wing design. but I only wished that they made it based on one of the real-life McLaren drivers, also I wished that they made the wheels the right size in the back. otherwise, I love the whole car and the fine details and shape of the car, as being a big F1 fan myself the car looks almost identical to the real one. even though I think $30.00 is a little too much I would say that if you love F1 or McLaren you should go and pick it up, but if you are willing to wait I would say to pick it up for when it goes on sale for $25.00 or less.