GP4: 1996 Tyrrell 024 walkaround part 1

The 1996 Tyrrell 024 was probably one of my favourite looking cars from 1996. It was a little sad to see so few sponsors on the mostly white car, but I did enjoy the Japanese GP livery in particular with the increased tobacco advertising. It gave me a particular impetus to make this car as nice as I could make it, little did I know at the time that it would be one of my last cars I would create for the 1996 mod.

This car, like the Ligier, was mapped by Soulbringer and painted by Kedy89 and I am truly appreciative that these great artists were able to help out on one of my cars, I'm really pleased with the end result of this car.

Harvey Postlethwaite, the team's head designer, was churning out some interesting designs and ideas for the cash-strapped team, from innovating the high noses in 1990, to swapping the front and rear wheels in Hockenheim practice 1995, to the X-wings in 1997.

The 1995 car had a particularly small rear end, and that concept is further refined in the 1996 car. The sidepod concept had changed from the 1995 car, with the upper element being quite curved, which wasn't easy to get right. Most of the sidepods you see are usually flat rather than slightly tapered, being lower on the outer edges and higher when it meets the engine cover.

One of the stand out things that appeared on the Tyrrell 024 mid-season was the suspension coverings over the top wishbones, both front and rear. The concept remains unique to this car, not being seen on any other car since.

With the car being mostly white in the early part of the season, it was important to make the car as smooth as possible, as any blemishes will show up more obviously. In fact in the shot above, the top of the sidepods just under the winglets show a couple of shadows that are a result of me not quite having the time to fix it. But looking at the smoothness of the engine cover and the side head protection, that's an area that I'm quite pleased with from a normals perspective.

If I remember correctly, the 1993 Tyrrell was already mostly completed by the time I started out on this car, so it was interesting when I got to the internal parts whether there were any transferable parts, mostly using it as a reference for places where I did not have particularly good photos of. In the end, I think the 1997 car was being used in the BOSS series and there were some good shots of the internals from that car, so that was what I used as a reference for this car mainly.

Once again, here is a clip of ta converted version of my car going around Monaco in rFactor 2. What's interesting to me about this conversion is that they put the normal suspension on, but they didn't take away the shadow from the textures.