Five hidden details behind LEGO 77242 Ferrari SF-24

There are many hidden details and LEGO techniques to appreciate about LEGO Speed Champions 77242 Ferrari SF-24 – here’s a list of five.

If you hadn’t noticed, one set from the recently-launched LEGO Speed Champions Formula 1 collection raced ahead of all others in popularity – 77242 Ferrari SF-24. As it comes back into stock, let’s call the car in for a quick pit stop to look at exactly why it’s so good (beyond the simplest answer of: ‘It’s a Ferrari’).

1 – The livery

Beyond the romanticism and iconography of the F1 team and beyond that the Ferrari brand as a whole, the most immediate appeal to 77242 Ferrari SF-24 is in that gorgeous bright red livery.

Interestingly, the design – based on the 2024 season car – is a mix between stickers, printed parts and just coloured parts – one small section of the yellow line running along the body of the car is actually the side edge to a 1×2 yellow bracket piece.

2 – Internal features

There is a wonderful delicacy to the design of a Formula 1 car, and the same can be said for a LEGO Formula 1 car – remove just a few pieces of bodywork and you are immediately into the internal workings of the vehicle in a way that can only give you new appreciation and understanding.

For a real F1 car, that would be in marvelling at how the engine works, or how the radiators and cooling system are folded into just the right shape. In a LEGO equivalent, it’s about unearthing what bizarre composition of pieces is seemingly able to hold the whole thing together.

3 – Sometimes complicated, sometimes simple

Part of what makes 77242 Ferrari SF-24 so interesting to build lies in how close to the real thing it is, thanks to a level of attention to detail you can only appreciate once hands-on with the LEGO F1 car.

The side-pods and engine cover in particular were unique to the 2024 Ferrari, from their general shape through to how they swept along the back of the car and created these unique lines of black and red. That shaping and design is wonderfully caught in miniature form across 77242 and in ways far beyond what we’d usually expect to see from a minifigure-scale set.

It is also captured through a mix of intricate parts usage and simple ideas. There’s a wonderful balance between the two if you look at the complexity of a lot of that side-pod design and how it’s simply finished off with a hinge piece and large red slope, making for perhaps the biggest single LEGO piece to be used across any of the 10 LEGO Speed Champions F1 sets released this year.

4 – Upside-down…floor

We thought we were familiar with SNOT techniques. Taking the direction of building in any way but up (so, Studs Not On Top), SNOT techniques are always fun when they show up in a LEGO set, offering quite literally another way of building.

When it comes to how such an approach was implemented in 77242 Ferrari SF-24…I mean, we can see it with our eyes, we built it with our hands too, but trying to understand exactly how those upside-down parts that form the floor fit so perfectly and are effortlessly in line with everything else is beyond us. Ridiculous creativity.

5 – Loose fittings, tight spaces

You wouldn’t know it to look at it, but the rear wing to 77242 Ferrari SF-24 is made up of a staggering 27 pieces alone, all wonderfully packed into a very tight, very intricate design that not only replicates a version of the wing that we saw in use on the real Ferrari SF-24 during the 2024 Formula 1 season, but that is remarkably solid and secure in structure.

At the same time, the roll hoop and engine intake area set directly behind the driver’s head is made up of a small, equally intricate but entirely loose-sitting structure that two door pieces hold in place. In a LEGO set full of twists and turns, this was perhaps the most unexpected surprise, yet one that works so well we can’t imagine any other way of building it.

Ultimately, 77242 Ferrari SF-24 is a celebration of clever LEGO design across a ton of excellent and unexpected techniques worked into the bodywork of the Ferrari. From how the internal structure of the vehicle comes together to some of the upside-down and even loose-fitting placements of parts, there are a fair few details that we’ve never built before in quite this way.

Whilst 77242 Ferrari SF-24 looks great once complete, how you put it together will stick with you longer than you realise.

This set was provided for review by the LEGO Group.

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