This weekend the 24-hour endurance race Le Mans celebrated its 100th anniversary. At the event, the LEGO® Technic team faced their own challenge as they had just 24 hours to recreate the recently released PEUGEOT 9X8 24H Le Mans Hybrid Hypercar on a giant scale. The set was created from 626.392 elements, these were built into upscaled Technic pieces. These were then used to build an 11:1 scale version of the set. The result is an impressive large-scale vehicle. These sorts of big builds often take months to create, so the fact took 8 people to build it in a day is quite impressive. You can compare it to the original set by checking out my review of the set here.
Live at Le Mans: LEGO® Technic™ and PEUGEOT Pulls off 24H Endurance Build Challenge Takes the Chequered Flag
Billund/Le Mans – June 10th, 2023: To mark the Centenary of the iconic Le Mans 24-hour race, master LEGO® Technic™ builders and the elite hyper car design team from PEUGEOT Sport have pulled off their biggest challenge to date – scaling up the LEGO Technic PEUGEOT 9×8 24H Le Mans Hybrid Hypercar to 11:1 scale… in just 24 hours, live at Le Mans.
It was pedal to the metal for the 12 design, engineering and building experts from the LEGO Group who built throughout the night: It took 626.392 LEGO Technic elements and almost no pit stops – a true feat of endurance.
The finished model features 623 different types of LEGO Technic elements, weights over 900 kg and is a scaled-up replica of the real-life LEGO Technic model: 520 cm long, 220 cm wide and 136 cm high.
The race against time started yesterday at 19:00 CEST when the Le Mans official speaker Anthony Drevet kicked off the challenge at the PEUGEOT Sport stand in the Fan Village right next to the iconic Circuit de la Sarthe. Visitors got to experience the model being assembled live on-site by the 12 LEGO builders.
Usually, large-scale LEGO Technic builds of this size take teams of 8 builders, over 5 months to complete, but the team beat the clock to take poll position at 19:00.
To make it possible, the team developed a concept for ‘hyper elements’ – upscaled versions of regular LEGO Technic elements made from hundreds of individual LEGO pieces – that was used by master builders for the first time on today.
“Our designers are always ready for the next challenge, but building this iconic model for real certainly pushed their building expertise to the limit” said Joanna Katharina Lazar, Vice President Global Product and Marketing Development at the LEGO Group. “Watching their creativity as they tackled the pioneering build live at Le Mans next to the real model, and hearing the crowd cheering them on was truly a once-in-a-lifetime moment. The challenge really shows that with LEGO Technic and some imagination, you can build anything for real.”
Linda Jackson, CEO of PEUGEOT said: “We have been working closely with LEGO Technic on the PEUGEOT 9X8 and are so happy that it is now available for fans across the world to buy. This weekend, here at Le Mans, are seeing the LEGO Technic PEUGEOT 9X8 come to life in the size of our race car! What a great idea to challenge the team to do it within 24 hours and it was exciting to see the team rise to the challenge.”
Not far from the PEUGEOT stand fans at Le Mans can visit the LEGO shop or explore their love of motorsports at the LEGO Group Experience Zone in the Fan Village. They will have the chance to test their engineering prowess by building and racing their own LEGO car, snap a shot against some amazing LEGO displays built by local fans, and enter competitions to win LEGO sets signed by LEGO Designer, Aurélien Rouffiange.
