Technic

McLaren MCL39 F1 Car

The papaya finally gets its 1:8 Technic moment, and it earns it.

Brick Rated Score

4.2/5

Set 42228 · 2026

Pieces1,675

Minifigsn/a

Year2026

Set number42228

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The verdict

This is the car that completed LEGO's set of the big four F1 teams, and honestly it might be the sharpest of the bunch.

You get a proper 1:8 machine with a working V6, a three-mode gearbox, and DRS that pops open when you shift into high gear, which is a genuinely clever bit of engineering. The papaya orange is what got me, that color just sings in beam form. Just know going in that it's pricey and there's a small mountain of stickers waiting for you at the end.

Best for: F1 fans and Technic builders who want the championship-winning McLaren on the shelf

The full review

What it is

The McLaren MCL39 is the car that swept the 2025 season, taking both the Constructors' and Drivers' titles, and now you can park it on your shelf in 1:8 scale as a 1,675-piece LEGO® set. It measures about 61cm long once finished, which is a proper presence, and the papaya-and-black livery is the whole reason this one lands the way it does. LEGO has been steadily releasing the big four F1 teams in this ground-effect era, and the McLaren is the set that completes the grid. What makes it more than a shelf ornament is the working stuff underneath. There's a V6 engine you can see once you lift the rear cover, a three-mode gearbox with low, neutral and high, and the party trick: the DRS flap on the rear wing is linked to the gearbox, so when you shift into high gear the wing actually opens like it's hunting for a pass on the straight. Pull-rod front suspension and push-rod rear suspension mirror how the real car is engineered, and the whole thing steers and drives. For an F1 fan, this is a lot of car.

The catch

There are a few things worth being straight with you about, though. The price is the big one. At 229.99 USD (299.99 CAD, 189.99 GBP) this is a serious spend, and if you already own the Ferrari or the Red Bull from this same line, the functions here will feel familiar rather than fresh. The engineering is refined, not reinvented. Then there's the sticker situation. The decal sheet is enormous, numbered up to 54 with some duplicates, so you're looking at close to 60 stickers to line up by hand at the end, and on a model this visible, a crooked one will bug you forever. The nagging accuracy issue that reviewers keep raising is the tires: the front and rear are the same width, when a real F1 car runs noticeably wider rears, so the stance isn't quite right if you know what you're looking at. A couple of reviewers also flagged some odd little holes in the sidepods and minor panel gaps, which are common in Technic bodywork but worth knowing about.

Who it's for

Here's where I land on it. If you follow F1, if the papaya means something to you, or if you just want a mechanically rich display piece that does clever things when you push it along the desk, this is an easy yes. The DRS linkage alone is worth a grin. If you're on a budget, or you already have one or two of the other F1 cars in this series and you're not fussed about the McLaren specifically, you can probably skip it without much regret, because you've largely built this experience before. But taken on its own, the MCL39 is the strongest and best-looking of the F1 four, and if it's the one team that's yours, you won't be disappointed. Just set aside a calm evening for those stickers.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

The build runs about six to eight hours and it's paced beautifully, following the same logic a real F1 car is assembled by. You start with the chassis and drivetrain, laying in the gearbox and that visible V6, then move on to the suspension systems, both the pull-rod front and push-rod rear setups that give the model real mechanical honesty. From there it's bodywork and aero surfaces, with bag 9 building out the sidepods and bag 10 finishing things off with the rear engine cover and the wheels. The gearbox and DRS linkage is the section that'll make you sit up, because connecting a rear wing flap to your gear selection is the kind of clever LEGO engineering that makes Technic worth it. Save the stickers for the very end, most reviewers wait until the whole thing is built before touching that sheet, and I'd take that advice.

On parts, the headline for collectors is the papaya orange. Technic beams in that McLaren papaya are genuinely rare outside this set and its McLaren predecessors, so if you like working that color into your own mechanical builds, this is one of the few places to source it. The tires and wheels use printing rather than stickers, which is a lovely touch and honestly makes you wish more of the car got the same treatment. As for value, 1,675 pieces for 229.99 USD works out to roughly 14 cents a part, which is on the higher side for Technic, but a chunk of that price is the licensing and the big functional gearbox, not just brick count. You're paying for the DRS trick and the McLaren name as much as the plastic.

Fun facts

01The real MCL39 won McLaren both the 2025 World Constructors' and World Drivers' Championships, so this set captures a genuine title-winning car rather than a hopeful midfielder.
02The rear DRS flap is wired to the gearbox, so shifting the model into high gear physically opens the wing, the same drag-reduction trick drivers use on the straights.
03This release completed LEGO's 1:8 lineup of the big four ground-effect-era F1 teams, giving collectors the full grid of McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes.
04The 61cm finished model runs pull-rod front and push-rod rear suspension, matching the opposite arrangements real F1 engineers use at each end of the car.