Formula 1 Fanatics Reveal How They Mounted $130K Race Car to Their Wall

Former race-car drivers Romain and Doreen Thievin have such passion for motorsports, it drove them to mount a floating 800-pound Formula 1 race car on the wall of the living room of their Las Vegas–area home.

The striking statement piece, which is 15 feet long and 6 feet wide, is a full-sized replica of the Lotus 97T —the car in which racing legend Ayrton Senna won his first F1 Grand Prix in 1985.

It took a total of $130,000 to purchase and properly secure the vehicle vertically above the fireplace at the Thievins’ five-bedroom, eight-bathroom, 10,000-square-foot luxury estate in Henderson, NV, with the cost of the vehicle itself coming in at $70,000.

However, that was a price, the F1 fans reveal in Celebrity Sanctuary, they happily paid to prominently display the prize piece that perfectly reflects their personality and priorities.

“Our whole life, I would say, is cars, fast cars, racing,” says Doreen, 40, who first appeared at races as a “grid girl,” a promotional model positioned on the starting grid at motorsport events, after being named Germany’s Playboy Playmate of the Year in 2008.

Wanting a turn in the driver’s seat, Doreen parlayed her ties to Playboy into a brand sponsorship of a car she raced to try to qualify for Formula 1’s all-female series.

Meanwhile, Romain, 47, had been lapping wins on and off the track for years in his native France. At 12, he got into go-karting and moved up to racing “supercars” when he was 16. 

The five-time French champion went on to add stunt driver and host of “Fast Club,” a French TV show about cars, to his record. Plus, he opened a business offering amateur racing enthusiasts a “supercar driving experience” that he eventually expanded to the United States.

Though the Thievins have changed lanes within the industry, they’ve kept their race-related careers on track. Today, Romain is the CEO of Speed Vegas, a racetrack attraction in Sin City that replicates the racing experience in a safe environment, while Doreen runs the company’s communications. 

The custom car centerpiece they created in their living room symbolizes how the couple, who met at a racetrack in 2018, never tire of merging their professional and personal worlds.

“For us, the career and the home life is very mixed and it’s great because we love what we do. So we do not have to come home and separate to get away from work,” states Doreen.

“We love our work. It’s our passion and we bring our passion home in that sense,” she adds. The car “reminds me of that, but it [also] gives such a ‘Wow’ every time we stand there, and we’re just amazed by it and we’re so lucky that we can do these kind of things.”

The F1 focal point that now hangs in the 2019-built, modern contemporary-style mansion that the Thievins bought and moved into in 2025 is the latest extension of their enthusiasm for the motorsport. Even the names of their children are a nod to some of the most renowned figures in the racing world.

“Both middle names are famous race-car driver-inspired,” explains Doreen of daughter Aria Senna, 2, and son Matis Hamilton, 13, and their tributes to Ayrton Senna and Lewis Hamilton.

In this installment of Celebrity Sanctuary, Romain and Doreen take a well-deserved victory lap for their remarkable design feat, and they detail the unique mechanics required to bring the major home installation across the finish line in the first place.

Doreen Thievin: We chose this home because we wanted to get a bigger [place]. We were actually living three houses down the road. We live in MacDonald Highlands. We love this community, so we bought an empty lot [here where] we wanted to build. After a couple of years, we stopped the building process because it was too complicated, too expensive. 

Then this house came on the market, which was literally three houses down from where we lived. It had almost the same floor plan as we wanted to build, so we made an offer. It got accepted, and we moved in. 

The style of the house was not completely what we wanted. It was a bit cold and dark, and there was not a lot of natural tones. So we wanted to bring some character in.

Romain Thievin: We wanted to bring [an] organic element to the house, so we put plants and wood everywhere. We also added some art. We bought the Samsung Frame TV to put everywhere. We replaced, downstairs, all the carpet [with] wood flooring. Very light-colored wood. 

We had to redo the pool. We are lucky [about when they] built this house, because … the pool was not limited in terms of size, so we have a big pool. It’s about 80 feet long.

We have our beautiful infinity pool, but we also have a lake and palm trees and a golf course in front. We have a lot of natural light. We have glass walls everywhere. 

Doreen: When we moved into the house, we changed our whole entrance. Everyone could look into the house when driving by, so we added a lot of plants and we changed completely the entrance area of the house. That was a big change. We changed the living room now. 

Romain: It’s a huge living room. The house is very square, so we wanted to have something round. We bought the bubble sofa from Roche Bobois, which is a French designer, [in] the white color, the ivory color, with the finishing of the softer boucle. The table is from Restoration Hardware.  

Doreen: Our home is really our sanctuary. We love to spend time at home. When other people travel away, we feel the most happy when we are at home. 

We have an amazing view … but we wanted to have something in the house which also reflects us and makes us happy. 

Romain: The car on the wall, it was the car of Ayrton Senna. Ayrton Senna won his first Formula 1 Grand Prix with this car in 1985, which is also the year Doreen was born.

Doreen: We have a lot of connections to that. The Formula 1 car, it could not be matching more our hobby, our passion. We watch racing every weekend there’s racing, so having a car on the wall is just, it’s so us. Everyone who comes into the house knows exactly who lives there.

We’re going to rename the house Villa Senna because it’s the Ayrton Senna car. It just reflects us, our passion, our life, and at the same time, it’s also an art piece. 

Romain: Yeah, like imagine you have a red Ferrari on the wall. It will be too cheesy or too race-y for us. We wanted something art, and for me, this is the most beautiful Formula 1 ever built. It’s black and gold, very simple, very slick, and it fits perfectly at home. It’s an art car on the wall.

Doreen: The whole project was about $130,000 and about $70,000 goes [to] the car itself. 

Romain: It’s not the original one because the original one is $5 million, [and] it would be a shame for me to put a real race car you can drive on a racetrack on a wall. It should be on a track and not on a wall, so that’s a replica. $70,000 for a replica, $30,000 for the wood and the LED, and the rest for the car preparation and the wood preparation, engineering.

Doreen: When we saw the car, it was about one to two years ago. Romain bought it and he knew right away he wanted to put it on a wall. We had it in storage for a year since we didn’t have the house—we had the car before we had the house!

Romain: We needed to buy a home with a high ceiling to be able to fit the car on the wall in the living room. 

Doreen: We had it in storage forever. It came from Brazil from the Ayrton Senna Foundation. We bought it from the Ayrton Senna Foundation, and then it needed some cosmetics. It was very difficult because, first of all, we needed a structural engineer to make sure when we put it up there that it doesn’t come down, that the wall is strong enough to hold it.

Romain: We had to engineer the car as well because it was not made to be put on the wall. We had to rebuild with an engineer the entire chassis to be able to have a structure able to welcome a frame, to have a male-female structure. So the first engineering part was on the car itself, and after it was the wall.

Doreen: We restructured the bottom of the car, basically. Then we built another structure, which almost looks like a back wall and some sticks coming out, which we mounted into the wall. Then we pulled up the car and we matched them together … so the car is really strongly attached to it. It was really an adventure. 

Romain: We asked Selhorst [Woodworks] from Las Vegas to build the wall, to recover the wall with wood to be able to place the car, and they took care of the LED and the wood slab. The wood was important. It’s [a] 24[-foot]-high ceiling, and the LED was very important for us. We wanted to have LEDs look like a racetrack on each side of the car, and we wanted to backlight the car as well. It’s an RGB, so we can change the color or we can put it with music.

Doreen: It’s very impressive and real because it kind of almost looks like it’s coming [down] on you. It’s hard to bring it across, the feeling, on photos.

Romain: I mean, you don’t [just] bring your 800-pound car like that, so we had to install a lift. We installed a temporary lift. Then you have to lift the car up, and the lift was a little bit too short, the cable, so we had to put the car down. I asked my mechanics from Speed Vegas to come and to weld an additional metal bar a little bit lower on the car to be able to lift it up. After, it was another challenge because the car was like 2 feet away from the wall, but we had to push it close to the wall and in the pin.

It was a challenge for me, and I like the challenge to do it. You cannot contact your contractor and say, “Hey, I want to bring a Formula 1 on the wall. Can you do it?” Most of the people say, “I don’t know, I cannot do it.” So, I had to find solutions, and I like to do that, to get creative.

I think we did everything right. It was a lot of energy, thinking, and planning to make that happen, and we are pretty proud of ourselves. We prefer to spend time, energy, a little bit of money, as well. Of course, you could [spend] $500,000 and pay someone to do it and it would not have been so fulfilling.

Doreen: We were really involved with the project. It was really a work from all of us involved, plus our project manager, so it was an adventure. 

This car, an Ayrton Senna, everyone loves that, so we had very good feedback from a lot of people who said, “Oh, my God, this is my dream living room.” I think for Romain, what is cool, a lot of comments were like, “I wish I could do that, but my wife would hate me.” And the beauty for us is that I love it as much as he loves it. … That’s kind of what makes it special for us. 

Romain: It’s a one-of-a-kind living room, and it fits us perfectly and it fits the home perfectly. Vegas is getting more and more popular with the new Formula 1 Grand Prix in Las Vegas recently, and it’s a legend of the Formula 1 cars from 1985, so it’s a car which is like 40 years old. 

I was in the bubble sofa yesterday night, and I was just enjoying and watching it at night because the LED looks amazing. So I was just here, Instagramming, looking on social media, and watching the car from the sofa. It’s very relaxing. 

Doreen: We can’t wait, [this] weekend is the first Formula 1 race. We will watch there. For now, we enjoy soccer, we enjoy the World Cup. We also have a movie theater, so we watch some stuff there, but now I can’t wait to watch our Formula 1 races in the living room.