Monday 27 May 2019

GP4: 1996 Ferrari F310 walkaround part 1

Next up in my walkaround series from the GP4 1996 mod is this one. The Ferrari F310 I wasn't really involved in, the main shape and work being done by Nick Ovey and Ebi Attard. I only got involved with helping them get the car in-game and creating the high nose, so that will be the car that I will review. If I remember correctly, this car was released years after the original McLaren, but a little before the Benetton by Oggo. So in my review, it's not for me to judge it according to the standards of some of my later works when I was pushing the boundaries of accuracy.



The car has good proportions overall, and is a pretty accurate shape. The car has lots of nice source photographs so that you can get some really good reference shots for modelling. What I did forget to update on this car was the rear winglet endplate, which should have been updated from the early season version.



If you notice from my other cars from the front and rear views is that everything lines up nicely, the width of the front wings, the sidepods etc. Sadly on this car the rear winglets exceed the width of the rest of the car. 


The John Barnard designed Ferrari for 1996 season was known as the truck, because of how it handled, perhaps not fitting for the arrival of double World Champion Schumacher. Somehow, he managed to eek out three victories in a car that didn't deserve to be challenging the Williams at all. 


The car started out the season with a low nose, though the nose itself was slightly raised giving more surface area to the front wing. This concept was ditched by the Canadian Grand Prix. There was no change to the main chassis to accommodate this, so the high nose had to be raised from the bulkhead forwards, which led to the slightly awkward bulbous shape. Compare this to the F310B for the 1997 season when nose and chassis were designed together in a more tightly fitted and slender and sleek shape.


Barnard also returned to a raised sidepod, something similar to the double floor concept tried (and failed) on the 1992 car. From this angle, you can see the sidepod is completely separated from the floor until the very rear.

As usual, you can read about how the car fared in my model review found here: https://fongugp4.blogspot.com/2019/03/143-model-review-1996-ferrari-f310.html