Interview: LEGO® 10353 Williams Racing FW14B with designer Gus McLaren

We just published Zach's review of LEGO® Icons 10353 Williams Racing FW14B and Nigel Mansell but the set was actually revealed to us in September 2024 during Fan Media Days, where Tim Johnson sat down with designer Gus McLaren to talk about the set.

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10353 Williams Racing FW14B & Nigel Mansell

• Release date: 1 March 2025
• Pieces: 799

Price: 

• US$ 79.99 on LEGO.com US
• CA$ 99.99 on LEGO.com Canada
• GB£ 69.99 on LEGO.com UK
• AU$ 129.99 on LEGO.com Australia
• NZ$ 139.99 on LEGO.com New Zealand
• DE€ 79,99 on LEGO.com Deutschland
• NL€ 79,99 on LEGO.com Nederland
• FR€ 79,99 on LEGO.com France
• PLN 349.99 on LEGO.com Polska
• NOK 1099,90 on LEGO.com Norge
• DKK 699.95 on LEGO.com Danmark

Other countries click here

  

Tim Johnson: This is pretty exciting for your first big set!

Gus McLaren: This is actually my second set; I started on LEGO® Star Wars™. I worked on the Paz Vizsla™ and Moff Gideon™ Battle set (75386) with the little door slamming down, and now I've moved over to LEGO® Icons.

Tim: So tell me about the model, bearing in mind that I'm a total car idiot.

Gus: Well, I'm not a traditional car person at all, but the way I design LEGO® models and things like that translates to car design quite well. I like to be very sculptural and very detail orientated, and I like to get the shape of things really correct and true. So when you're designing something like a Formula 1® car, that comes in really handy.

Tim: How did you approach the build; what's your process?

Gus: If you go down to a really rudimentary level, the first step was just sizing out the wheel spacings. I was fortunate that I had the 10330 McLaren MP4 model to look upon, which is the same scale and the same sort of vibe as this. I could use that as a starting point but then once you get into the details it's completely different, because the shape of this car is just so different to the other one. 

Tim: And do you have a good car design colleague in Sven Franic?

Gus: Yes, and Hoàng Đặng – he's a real car guy and a Formula 1 guy too. He was really good at telling me about the active suspension and all that kind of stuff. This is the Williams FW14B, not the A. The A is different: it doesn't have the bulges for the active suspension, and some other elements, so that kind of thing is really fun to discover and to figure out a way to do them in LEGO® form. It's great to have folks like that on your side. 

Tim: I suppose the reference material was good too?

Gus: The IP [intellectual property] partners were incredibly helpful and informative, like when I added these things under the wheels. It wasn't something necessary, because you usually can't even see them in pictures. They're so thin and they were kind of hard to build with LEGO® elements. Last minute, I threw them on before a call with them and they said, it's best thing ever that you've done, they're so important to the car. So they are also very good at bolstering you up!

Tim: It's a great looking model: the engine is very detailed.

Gus: Thanks! Probably the biggest challenge was to get all of that stuff in there while still maintaining structural integrity, especially where the engine meets the rear spoiler assembly, as they're taking away all of the vital space for support, or taking away space for details. It was always a balance: which details do you pick?

Tim: I love those whips, they fit so snugly in there.

Gus: If you look at individual placement difficulty, that was probably the most difficult one, because they're a fixed length and not a straight piece that can bend anyway you want. They're already curved, so you've got to fight that curve. I think that those types of details are what's worth spending two days getting right, because they look the part – there are hydraulics hoses running all through his car, in reality, that are blue.

Tim: What does that black minifigure head represent?

Gus: That's a hydraulic reservoir. Actually, this car had this really unique suspension system: these big hydraulic actuators on the front, on the two wheels, that could tilt the car. Essentially it had one on the back and then two on the front that could sort of rotate the car as it'd go into turns. So it could stay level as the car got faster into turns; Mansell was in a gyroscope of sorts. With his aggressive style, he could turn into corners and stay level and flat.

Tim: How about new elements?

Gus: These wheels are new. These new ones are almost double the thickness of the ones from the MP4 set. I don't think they're quite double thick, but they're much wider. They're a non-symmetrical part. So the front wheels are symmetrical in that the bushing is in the middle, whereas these new wide rear ones are one module over. The front wheels are the same as the ones in the MP4 set but this time, with printing on.

Tim: Any exciting recolours?

Gus: Well, the whips are new in blue, we've got the big studless slope, and a blue LEGO® Technic bushing...

Tim: I notice the blue bushings are only on one side?

Gus: There was a lovely reason for that colour change: the real-life car has blue nuts on its wheels on one side, as they're left- and right-handed.  In a pit stop to make sure they've not got them wrong, they pick up a silver one, and the silver one goes on one side, and the blue one goes on the other side. 

Tim: How about prints and stickers?

Gus: The only things that are printed are the wheels. This element here will have the blue triangle printed on it to keep that line going through. [Note: Gus did not yet have the final production model at the time of this interview.]

Tim: I love this stand with the dynamic pose. It's the same as the stand for the MP4, right?

Gus: We toyed with the idea of designing a new one. But I think in the end, we liked the idea of them being uniform, so then they are a continuous collection.

Tim: What was the most difficult thing to get right with this model?

Gus: Maybe the engine, to be honest: using LEGO Technic elements like this with LEGO® System elements can be tricky from a legal connections point of view. Getting that right was a bit of a challenge – not the most unrealistic challenge in the world, but still a challenge. There's just no room for error in this model; it's so thin and refined. Everything has to be specific: it's all there for a reason. It's all structural with very few decorative elements. On this model you find that the decorative layer is literally just the tiles that go around the outside, and then everything inside is really important.

Our thanks to Gus for taking the time to explore this exciting set with us, and to LEGO for organising the interview. 

READ MORE: Our review of 10353 Williams Racing FW14B & Nigel Mansell 

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