Moving onto the 2nd part of the sidepods, you can see the body line nicely. There is a slight undercut at the bottom of the rear of the sidepod, and with the vent there, it was not the easiest to get right.
The rear of the bodywork has this complex circle for the rear suspension mounts. The bottom part completes the coke bottle and is quite wide, but the upper part of the circle is quite narrow. It's always difficult to get this curve looking smooth from every angle.
You can see some of the detail I added to the rear wing endplates with the indent near the trailing edge. In the pre-season testing, the team didn't initially run with rear wheel winglets, so the endplate was much shorter, and you can see from the wireframe how the winglet is an additional extra.
The rear suspension is probably one of the first cars where I managed to get it as accurate as possible. With the wireframe, you can also see the vane that rises from the floor. At the time, there were a few photos of the inside of the 196, but there were better photos of the 197, which I used as inspiration for parts of the insides of my 196.
On the engine cover you can see where all the body lines meet without disrupting the smooth normals of the rest of the shape. There is also a small triangular vent under the Peugeot logo.
As mentioned in my other walkarounds, there were some interesting developments on the diffusers and I think Jordan's was the most complex and interesting. The main central section is curved, with the lower part of it narrower as we see on other cars. But there are many slits on the top edge of the central diffuser, this helps maintain the boundary layer and reduce the likelihood of stalling. The rest of the diffuser is lower in the central parts for the exhaust, which is a squat oval shape. The rest of the diffuser is then angled with a gurney flap on top.
You can see I modelled some of the rear suspension mounting points as well in more detail than I remember.
Whoever mapped the GP4 car and put it back together again has merged a lot of parts together I had initially intended to keep separate. So if you go and crash this car, not much falls off and you can't see much of the detail I put on the inside of the car. Here, you can see the curved rear bodywork and how it exposes the gearbox.
You can see how the sidepods channeled air towards the engine. By this stage, I had made individual cylinders on the engine myself. In terms of internals of a car, this car is probably one of my favourites, so I was a little disappointed that you can't appreciate that on the final car. However, I'm still grateful for all the contributors for making this car and its variants, it could still be sat on my hard drive unfinished.
All in all, this remains one of the best cars I've created and I think the end result is pretty good. If I was really picky, I'd say the rear wing could move rearwards a touch, but that is only minor. Here's some shots of the car in GP4.
 |
 |
