LEGO Technic 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 review
LEGO Technic 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 leads large-scale Formula 1 building in a new, hyper-detailed direction.
Hot on the heels of last year’s 42171 Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 E Performance and 2022’s 42141 McLaren Formula 1 Race Car, and releasing alongside the more immediately eye-catching 42207 Ferrari SF-24 is Formula 1’s lead car 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20, the latest in the big-budget, big-scale Technic F1 sets.
42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20
Release: March 1, 2025
Retiring: December 31, 2027
Price: £199.99 / $229.99 / €229.99
Pieces: 1,639
Minifigures: 0
Between the LEGO City range from January, the Speed Champions line-up coming this March and 42206 due the same month, we’ve gone from never having had a LEGO F1 Red Bull set to having a choice to pick from.
Where LEGO City 60445 F1 Truck with RB20 & AMR24 F1 Cars brings playability and LEGO Speed Champions 77243 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 brings detail and collectability, 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 F1 Car offers the deepest cut for the most technically-minded Red Bull fans keen to really dig into recreating Max Verstappen’s title-winning car.
Whilst we have had large-scale LEGO Technic F1 cars in recent years from Mercedes and McLaren, this year’s duo of 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 and 42207 Ferrari SF-24 very much take things further, building on the frameworks and techniques established with 2022’s McLaren and 2024’s Mercedes-AMG to offer even more thorough, detailed models of the Red Bull and Ferrari F1 cars from the 2024 season, inside and out.
For the Red Bull (and Ferrari, but read about that in a separate review) this means a build that is not only packed with inner workings and features, but also decorated with one of the most detailed and accurate liveries of an F1 car in LEGO form we have ever seen. Form and function are worked into and across 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20, making for – as much as anything else – a LEGO Technic set worthy of a championship-winning car.
The build is spread across 10 numbered bags and is as involved as you’d expect and hope for from 1,639 pieces, whilst also being speedy enough that by, say, the end of the second lot of bags you’ve got a hefty portion of the front suspension and steering in place, as well as the moving pistons of the V6 engine. It’s a smart build and not the simplest to put together, but immediately rewarding and interesting for what it begins to show you the final model is capable of.
That intrigue continues as you progress through the build, with the first five bags centred on putting together the wheel base, flooring and engine, offering a real insight into parts of the car we don’t normally see (of course within reason – we’re not getting a 1:1 replica here). 42171 Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 E Performance from last year was very similar in offering that added level of detail to the inner structure, and the Technic team have been smart to simply refine elements of the shaping and design, rather than completely rework the Red Bull.
The second half of the build focuses on the bodywork across the car and, even if this is where things become a little more recognisable for F1 fans, that high level of design remains, with techniques just as perplexing and fiddly as in the first half of the build. Particular angles and details across the 63cm-long chassis come together excellently, as the unique curves and angles of the RB20 begin to take shape.
Putting together 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 is not for the weak-fingered nor the inattentive – it will toughen your fingertips and teach you about precision in a way that regular LEGO System sets and smaller Technic sets tend not to. For instance, be careful to satisfyingly line up the gearing on the steering before you get to the stage where you notice that the steering wheel is ever so slightly misaligned when the front wheels sit straight. By then so much is locked in and immovable that there’s no going back.
This is a tough and sturdy build, solid in structure and precise in design, even if the 51-numbered sticker sheet does do a lot of the heavy-lifting to bring the car to life, not just in terms of accuracy but for helping to highlight some of the more subtle, clever aspects of the bodywork that have been caught by the Technic design team’s work here. For the number of stickers and for how challenging the positioning of some of them in particular are, there is a temptation to simplify 42206 as just a scaled-up Speed Champions set, except for how well the extra size and piece count is used to capture curvature and angle that F1 fans more familiar with these vehicles will appreciate and that a Speed Champions car could only dream of.
The most immediately impressive detail upon completing the 1,639-piece build is actually in the aero rake of the car – the angle of inclination that the vehicle sits in when viewed side on. Red Bull have in recent years tended towards an aggressive sharp angle pointing downwards towards the front wing and it is wonderfully captured in LEGO form here in such a surprising but effective way. It’s a small detail you won’t notice from most angles, but it very much plays into capturing the character and nature of this championship-winning car, as a design feature that in recent years Red Bull (under Chief Technology Officer Adrian Newey) has come to be known for.
But that’s just one of many details to fully appreciate and enjoy across a sizeable and credible 1:8 LEGO Technic model. 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 is the latest in this series of F1 cars and takes the learnings from what has come before to offer the most detailed and enjoyable experience so far (alongside this year’s Ferrari).
LEGO Technic 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 comparison
42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 isn’t the only large-scale Technic F1 set releasing March 1, 2025 and faces tough competition in the form of 42207 Ferrari SF-24, which for many will automatically be the more appealing car to begin with, thanks to that striking and iconic red livery.
Importantly, though, whilst there are clear similarities in the broader sense of how the two cars are built, they are also sufficiently different so as to offer separate ways in which to explore and understand the different make-ups of their respective bodyworks. From the front wing all the way through the rear wing there are ways in which 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 and 42207 Ferrari SF-24 clearly differ that go far beyond just the colour scheme and plethora of stickered sponsors.
These differences are key to establishing clearer identity between the two and help to present the darker tones of the Red Bull as a genuine and unique contender for those otherwise just drawn to the prettier Ferrari. The RB also has almost 300 more pieces to its name, which for the same high price of both sets does present it in a slightly more favourable light as far as value is concerned.
But, price is where both could struggle to match last year’s 42171 Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 E Performance and 2022’s 42141 McLaren Formula 1 Race Car, both of which are still available and come in cheaper – in the McLaren’s case, £30 cheaper. Presumably aspects such as the smoother tyres and what look like an increased number of stickered sponsors to licence are what have pushed the Ferrari and Red Bull up in price.
Whilst size-wise all four vehicles come to the same measurements, at least with the Red Bull and Ferrari you can see advances in design, techniques and ideas – the collection of large-scale F1 cars is getting dearer, but at least it is trying to match that rate of increase with an advanced LEGO experience. Let’s hope the next ones in this series are even better than they are more expensive…
Our honest opinion: Intricate, detailed, accurate – LEGO Technic 42206 Oracle Red Bull Racing RB20 offers a deep dive for F1 fans worthy of a championship-winning car, even at this slightly higher price bracket.
This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.
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