GP4: 1996 Ligier JS43 walkaround part 3

Welcome back to the third installment of the Ligier JS43 walkaround, a car I made for the 1996 mod for GP4 with the help of Oggo, Soulbringer and Kedy89. The car won one race incredibly at Monaco, though there were only 4 classified finishers in a bonkers wet race which you can see highlights of below.

Coulthard ran in Schumacher's helmet, it rained, a first corner crash with Verstappen on slicks being the cause, Schumacher crashed into a barrier on lap 1. After 5 laps, only 13 cars remained from the 21 that started. Hill lead and his engine blew up, Alesi lead and he retired. Villeneuve was struggling and crashed into a Forti. Irvine was having all kinds of dramas and took out another two cars when doing a recovery spin when Salo's Tyrrell came around the corner and into the back of him. With four runners left, Frentzen gave up on the penultimate lap and pulled into the pits, leaving only the three cars to actually finish the race - all of them on the podium. Oh if all that would happen in 2019!

Here is a look at the side head protection, and the unique way in which it joins the engine cover. Rather than tapering down, it tapers into the rollover bar, with the fuel cap neatly positioned in there. There is a mini shark-fin at the top, not unique to Ligier.

The front of Ligier's sidepods are very similar to the 1995 car. Notice the floor underneath, where it is higher off the ground at the front half, before it joins with the rest of the floor half way down. The winglets at the rear are a unique take with an additional element half way down the sidepod. The rear wing end plate fence does not extend all the way to the winglet, but enough to cover the rear wheels from the airflow in the middle of the car.

The shape of the sidepods at the rear is different to the 1995 car, with the JS43 extending the top surface to lead the airflow smoothly to the winglets, leading to something of an undercut at the bottom.

The 1995 Ligier and Benetton had an aerofoil cover for the upper suspension elements, with the engine cover going neatly underneath it. The concept is largely kept by Ligier, and is also developed on the Benetton B196. The bulges at the centre of the car are always tricky to get right and integrate with the rest of the engine cover whilst keeping normals smooth.

Here is a wireframe shot of the rear of the car. It's got an interesting diffuser, with multiple vanes on the outer diffuser, but the central part has a deep undercut and the top element is split into a number of elements. For me, these things and the rear wing support which integrates the rear jack hold is always fun to model.

Coming to the insides of the car, all the parts, bar the engine itself is unique to this car. Even the cylinders are unique to the Mugen-Honda V10. You can see the rear suspension covers clearly. Kedy89 has done a great job with the textures - not overdoing it, not making it too bright.

The radiators are asymmetric, and you can see a small radiator on the left side hidden under the raised sidepods. I like modelling the insides, but its easy to over do it on the detail, so the idea was to put the main parts in, keep it low-poly, so that you get an idea of what's there rather than focussing a lot of effort into creating something nobody sees or has time to inspect in-game. If you look carefully, you'll see the exhaust is in the central section of the diffuser, looking to exploit gains from an exhaust-blown-diffuser, which has its roots from the B194.

I hope you enjoyed this walkaround. The Ligier didn't really excite me when I came to making it, but having spent time looking at it and remodelling it, I've come to appreciate some of the nice details that has gone into it, and I hope that's come across in these blog posts.

Below are some shots of the car in GP4.