One big change can make or break LEGO Speed Champions in 2025

The LEGO Speed Champions team has the chance to make a big change for its upcoming 2025 sets – and it’s a detail that could arguably make or break the next wave of cars.

LEGO and Formula 1 have made for strong bedfellows over the past couple of years, with a mix of sets across Speed Champions, Icons and Technic already available to purchase. And an even bigger push into the world’s biggest motorsport is on the cards for 2025, when the LEGO Group and Formula 1 will kick-start what they’re calling a ‘multi-year collaboration’, delivering sets across a much wider range of themes.

But while the current F1 sets have their strengths, they’re all missing one detail that for whatever reason has been lost in translation to bricks so far: wider rear tyres. Real Formula 1 cars use wider tyres at the back of the vehicle to increase its footprint on the track, transmitting more power from the engine while minimising wheelspin. But this causes drag, so the front tyres are smaller to compensate, making the cars more aerodynamic.

It’s a careful bit of engineering that is not reflected at all in LEGO sets, whether in LEGO Speed Champions 76919 2023 McLaren Formula 1 car or the bigger LEGO Icons 10330 McLaren MP4/4 & Ayrton Senna. At every size and scale, LEGO Formula 1 cars have four equal tyres.

A point of focus

LEGO Speed Champions is a theme that in recent years has defined itself by a single point of focus across each year on shelves. In 2021, the designers focused on improving the cars’ wheels. In 2022, they honed in on headlights, prioritising prints over stickers. So it would make complete sense for 2025’s major point of focus to be multiple tyre sizes, because we supposedly have 10 Formula 1 cars dropping all at once in March.

Those sets will apparently represent the entire 2024 Formula 1 starting grid, from Red Bull and Mercedes to Kick Sauber and Haas. If the LEGO Group really wants to make a statement with the first year of its ‘multi-year collaboration’ with Formula 1, it needs to nail the one detail its LEGO sets have been missing to date – and wider rear tyres would instantly elevate the entire 2025 wave above the current batch of LEGO Speed Champions F1 cars.

They’d also provide a neat point of differentiation between the new McLaren and Aston Martin cars and their immediate predecessors, which have really only just arrived on shelves. The Aston Martin could swap to a more accurate teal from the green version in 76925 Aston Martin Safety Car & AMR23, but if the LEGO Group wants to give petrolheads a real reason to upgrade after only nine months, more accurate tyres is surely the way to go.

Future-proofing

2025 also feels like the obvious moment to introduce new a tyre (and perhaps wheel) mould because the LEGO Group will get to use them across at least 10 different sets straight away – at least if rumours are to be believed – and presumably any future Formula 1 cars under the LEGO Speed Champions banner, too. (Remember: this is a multi-year collab.)

And with one eye on the wider year of Formula 1, those new elements could even find a use across themes like LEGO City, depending on the scale chosen for its rumoured F1 sets. Regardless, wider rear tyres are really the biggest thing missing from Formula 1 LEGO sets at the moment – and if the LEGO Group is serious about going big on the sport in 2025, it can’t continue to pretend it doesn’t exist.

For more casual F1 fans looking for something new and unique in the LEGO Speed Champions line-up (especially over the current eight-wide cars), the tyres on the 2025 sets could arguably make or break the entire wave. And that’s before we even get to the rumoured LEGO Technic Formula 1 sets…

Rumoured LEGO Speed Champions 2025 sets

Featured image: Steffen Prößdorf (licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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