Behold, the Team Tankpool24 Racing truck made entirely of Lego bricks...
Behold, the Team Tankpool24 Racing truck......made entirely of Lego bricks.
The 1.5kg, radio-controlled beast is capable of reaching 19km/h and is a brainchild of Paweł 'Sariel' Kamieć, a Lego builder from Poland who drew inspiration from the Forza Motorsport video game where the truck, originally driven by two-time FIA European Truck Racing Championship title winner Norbert Kiss, is featured.
“It was a simple build in just three days,” 'Sariel' wrote on his website.
“I started playing with some pieces to see if I could build a cabin similar to that of a Mercedes-Benz truck featured in the Forza Motorsport games. The rest of the model followed so quickly that I didn’t even have time to take any work-in-progress photos.”
It may be the first FIA ETRC racer built by 'Sariel' but it’s not his first heavyweight motorsport project.
He had previously built a Tatra Dakar truck, a Ford Raptor Trophy Truck as well as an imaginary racing version of a Scania race truck.
“The Tatra had nice speed and good steering, but it lacked stability and was pretty fragile. The Ford Raptor Trophy Truck has demonstrated how weight-sensitive the LEGO RC motors are, so I wanted to keep the weight low,” he explained.
Learning from these experiences, the Polish builder decided to compromise aesthetics and resemblance to the original truck in order to focus on performance and durability.
Interestingly enough, with performance being the priority, the project shares the same philosophy with the trucks competing in the FIA ETRC.
“[The] Scania has already been built to look pretty and it ended up being heavy and slow. Considering all these experiences, I’ve decided that my goal should be a fast model with a robust body, kept as simple as possible to preserve low weight. Mechanical complexity and accurate looks were of secondary importance.”
“As a result of these priorities, the truck was fairly simple and looked somewhat different from the real one.
"I’ve added headlights inside the front bumper, omitted real truck’s rear mudguards because I liked how the tires looked and preferred to leave them exposed, and because such mudguards would have to be either fragile or ugly,” he explained.
The angled supports behind the cabin are another interesting feature of the model. According to the creator of the truck, these are inspired by the record-breaking Volvo Iron Knight truck, created by the former FIA ETRC racer Boije Ovebrink.
The livery loosely reassembles the one of Kiss’ truck from the 2016 and ’17 FIA ETRC seasons. “I made the cabin white because I liked this combination of colours more than with a light grey. The stickers combined livery of the in-game truck with parts of livery from the real truck with the addition of my own logo,” concluded 'Sariel'.
