2019 Mexican GP Review

The 2019 Mexican Grand Prix was won by Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes in an unlikely win, but with Bottas finishing in third place, Hamilton hasn't quite sealed the Championship yet. The race itself was not too bad, building to an exciting finish, which was a bit of a damp squib, an anti-climax.

The drama started in qualifying, where Bottas crashed on the outside of the final corner. Verstappen, who was already fastest at the time, did not slow down past the wreckage and was awarded a three place grid drop for the race. Had he been able to start from pole position, he probably would have been set to seal a hat-trick of wins at the Mexican race. Verstappen got a good start, but Hamilton was unwilling to yield and threw his car around the outside of turn 1, with Verstappen ahead at the turn. Both cars nearly lost it, with Hamilton nearly taking out Vettel with his slide. Thankfully no contact was made, but it forced Hamilton and Verstappen off wide and dropped places. No fault with Verstappen there, and Hamilton could well have just settled for fourth. It meant that Verstappen, with a quick car, had to fight back and attempted and made a cheeky move in the hairpin in the stadium section on Bottas. Bottas, clearly shocked by the Red Bull, clipped Max's rear tyre, resulting in a puncture. Unfortunately for Max, the tyre stayed together for the length of the pit straight as he defended his position, only for the tyre to fail at the first chicane. From there, Verstappen did well to fight his way back through, even banging wheels with Kevin Magnussen on the way - and sneakily overtaking him off track, but shh nobody saw that. Incredibly, he did 65 laps on that hard tyre. That's been the kind of luck Verstappen's had the second half of this season. Driver of the first half of the year, he's just been plagued with bad luck, and it shows that Albon, who is still getting to grips with the car to be fair, has outscored him since they have been paired together. Red Bull should have more points and trophies to their name since the summer break.

Albon had a reasonable weekend, wasn't particularly on the pace in qualifying, benefited from the turn 1/2/3 situation and was running comfortably third early on. In an attempt to undercut the Ferrari's on a two stop strategy (which turned out to be the wrong strategy), the team pitted him early, but into traffic, where any advantage to be gained was instantly lost. From there, he just had to bring the car home.

It was a weekend that saw a number of pitstop mistakes, the biggest victim being Lando Norris whose wheel was not secured as he left his pitbox - having to stop at the end of the pitlane and his mechanics wheeling the McLaren back. He dropped to last and ended up retiring. It ruined Sainz's race as well as he was forced to stay out on hard tyres that simply did not work on the car. After successfully picking his way through the first few corners, he was on for another best of the rest finish, but it was not to be.

To that end, Perez had the honour of finishing best of the rest, with a solid race weekend and being cheered all the way by his home crowd. You can't ask for any more from him and the team.

Back to the front of the grid, Ferrari started one-two and it would be interesting whether they would orchestrate their start as they did in Russia (successful and unsuccessfully at the same time). Vettel moved over into the slipstream straight away, but it crowded Hamilton off the track. I'm really not a fan of doing that at the start of the race, weaving recklessly from one lane to another, you don't see it in Indycar where they have spotters for that kind of thing to stop having huge accidents. Has Vettel not learned from Singapore 2017 where he took his team-mate and Verstappen out? Perhaps Ferrari could have orchestrated it better and planned for Leclerc to move in front of Vettel and give him a tow to turn 1, but after Russia, would you ask Charles to do that? Anyway, for me, that swerve was not on for me.

Another botched pitstop meant that Leclerc lost too much time to be in the mix at the end. Vettel was left out for ages, presuming Hamilton's tyres would degrade, but they didn't and Vettel did not get anywhere near the back of Hamilton's victorious Mercedes. Whilst Ferrari have been on pole for the last five races, Mercedes have won the last three races on the trot. A large part of that has to come down to their strategy decisions. Why did they pit Leclerc first on a two-stop strategy. I know he gets first choice, but he was under no threat from Albon who was trying the undercut and was caught in traffic. If anything, they should have pitted Vettel to block Albon off, but perhaps they feared Vettel would undercut Charles if they had remained on the two-stop strategy. Anyway, one stop was the right way to go and they tried to leave Vettel out as long as they could to try and give him the most advantage for the second stint, but again that failed too.

Mercedes did well to repair Botta's car without taking any penalties, incredible really. Bottas ran a good race to finish on the podium, thanks largely down to Verstappen's horrid race luck, Albon's rubbish strategy and Leclerc's botched pitstop.
Hamilton was balked at the start which meant he was fourth into the first corner, only for his ambitious move on Verstappen into turn 1. He was lucky to not lost out too much ground after rejoining after turn 3, and the team masterfully put him on the optimal strategy. His car was damaged, which would have not helped his tyre management, but he did really well to maintain the pace and the tyre life to not even let Vettel anywhere near the back of his car at the end of the race.

Ricciardo's strategy propelled him up the grid, doing a mega 51 lap stint on the hard tyres. His ambitious lunge on Perez could have been better managed, the Renault clearly not as good on the brakes as the Red Bull he had previously. Hulkenberg was going a solid job behind too, but with the tyres well off the cliff at the end, he was punted into the wall by Kvyat.

I've moaned about this before, but the tyres have got to change to allow for better racing. I understand you want drivers to manage their tyres to get them to perform at the optimum, but the fact they overheat so easily behind another car is just stopping them from racing. It's really good that we're getting variations on strategy, and that we usually get to see degradation being a factor in some races, but there's still room for improvement.

The podium was cool, I really loved how Hamilton was raised with his car, but Hamilton is the right showman for that kind of thing, I can't really see it being quite as cool if it was say Bottas. Nevertheless, I'm a fan that it represents the team and the car as well as the driver as the victors. Selfie Stig guy on the podium on the other hand was ridiculously cringe worthy, taking the spotlight off the drivers, but the highlight of the weekend for me was Vettel's shoving him gently out the way in a disgusted way, TV gold!

The other highlight for me was the battle of the Williams drivers, brilliant battling out on track, firm but fair.

1/43 Model Review: 1997 Arrows A18 Yamaha

Background

It was not the first time that the driver who won the World Championship left the Williams team the following year, Mansell and Prost had also left earlier that decade, as did Piquet after 1987. He had apparently had offers from McLaren, Benetton and Ferrari, Hill surprisingly went for the TWR ran Arrows team, who finished 9th with one point to their name in 1996. However they were the main test team for Bridgestone on their debut season, which would bring an advantage against the Goodyear rubber ran by most the other teams.

Team-mate Pedro Diniz brought substantial backing with him, along with new Yamaha engines and later in the year a new techincal director, John Barnard from Ferrari. The car struggled to qualify at the first race in Melbourne and retired on the parade lap, and the car retired more often than it finished. It was uncompetitive, but by mid-season it began to fight for points. At Silverstone, Hill's home race, he ran well and scored a point for sixth place. Hill qualified third at Hungary, ran second behind Schumacher and then passed him when the German's tyres were shod. Hill lead for much of the race until a throttle linkage problem cost him considerable pace with a few laps to go. Villeneuve caught him and passed him on the grass on the last lap. Hill still finished an incredible second for the team.

Though Hill was the team-leader, Diniz out-qualified the champion at the French, Belgian and Japanese tracks, the later two both known as challenging drivers tracks and managed a fifth place at the Luxembourg GP at the Nurburgring.

Minichamps

Minichamps 430970001

Minichamps 430970002

Minichamps produced the Arrows car. It's nice to have the red nose and rear wing end plates on Hill's car and yellow on Diniz's car. The shape of the model is pretty decent representation of the real car. The most disappointing thing for me is how low the driver sits in the car. That and the slightly wonky front wing, I still quite like the model.

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In the UK, they released four special versions of various Damon Hill's cars. The Arrows one is based on the British GP, where after a difficult year so far, he scored points at his home race.
Score: 7/10

JPS

I've not heard of JPS models before, and again there's not many good photos of this, but this is a pretty reasonable model kit. The model is based on the Hungarian GP, with the amended airbox inlet. However, that looks quite a skinny rear wing for the high downforce track. The wheels look like they sit a bit too wide. I think the model is of similar standard to the Minichamps model.
Score: 7/10

IXO

Released in 2022, Ixo brings this nice budget version of the TWR Arrows. 

1/43 Model Review: 1997 Sauber C16 Petronas

Background

After losing the Mercedes Engine to McLaren for the 1996 season, Sauber were able to negotiate Ferrari customer engines, a start of a nine year relationship, that was rekindled following BMW's departure in 2010. They took on long time Ferrari Test Driver, Nicola Larini, but he left the team after five races. Morbidelli replaced him, but broke his arm on two separate occasions, meaning Norberto Fontana was also used by the team. Herbert, in his second year for the team, was able to lead the team to 7th in the Constructors' Championship with an impressive podium finish at Hungary.

Onyx

Onyx 298

Onyx released their budget version of the Sauber back in 1997. It's really not too bad for a budget model, yes the front wing droops a bit, there could be more definition on the airbox, and the rear wing looks like it's going to fall off the back of the car, but the general shape is reasonable, the colour scheme acceptable, the rims are correct, as are the helmets, so it's not too bad all things considered, particularly for the price you pay.
Score: 6/10

Minichamps

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Minichamps finally released their version in 2019, available with Herbert and Larini in limited edition runs. The car is based on the end of season with the sculpted front wing endplates, and sculpted sidepod flaps and a much smaller rear wing endplate. This is a fantastic resin model from Minichamps, with lovely proportions and fantastic added detail as well.

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The real reason this model was made was to add to the Schumacher 25th anniversary collection, which comes in a few different inlays from what I can tell. Peter Sauber had a close working relationship with Ferrari and after the Italian GP, was able to borrow Schumacher for a secret test at Fiorano, with photos being leaked years later. Sauber wanted an experienced driver to help with imbalance issues, with Herberts teammates all struggling with the car. Schumacher completed 84 laps and lapping around a second slower than his time in a Ferrari. Schumacher ran the car without sponsors on.

Score: 8/10

Tameo

Tameo TMK244

Based on the Hungarian GP, this is the Tameo version of the Sauber. I love all the upper rear wing elements, the extra fin inside the sidepod opening, the detail on this model is lovely. The cockpit detail is exquisite and there's nothing missed on this model. I think I personally prefer the Minichamps model overall, but the fine details on this car just about makes up for it.
Score: 8/10

1/43 Model Review: 1997 Prost JS45 Mugen-Honda

Background

Alain Prost returned to F1 as team owner taking over from the Ligier team. The team was in transition for 1997 as Prost looked to build an all French team. The team retained the Mugen-Honda engines and Olivier Panis who was partnered by Shinji Nakano at Mugen's request. The team was amazingly competitive for the first six races, Panis offering a true title challenge, but a crash at Canada broke both of his legs, and he would not return until the end of the year. Prost quickly hired impressive Trulli from Minardi and they continued to show good speed. He finished 4th in Germany and lead much of the Austrian Grand Prix.

Minichamps

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This model was one of the earliest models I owned, with reasonably good midfield runner, Panis making an unlikely title challenge. Truth was he was in the best position to make the most of the new Bridgestone tyres that were particularly strong during the race. It's a shame Panis had his accident, I doubt he would have maintained the points scoring rate for the rest of the season, but I certainly think he would have added to his two podiums he had already secured. I remember the particularly long nose on this car, and compared to other cars, the rear wing endplates were as small as they could be. Other than that, the shape of the car is a development of their 1996 car, but I did like the simple all blue livery. The Minichamps model was reasonably well done, no real problems with the dimensions, and they've done a reasonably nice job at the rear of the car where the detail is.
Score: 7/10

Tameo

Tameo TMK246

This Tameo model is based on Trulli's Italian GP car, with low downforce wings, and it also comes with a removable engine cover. The detail underneath is fantastic and a plus for me is the asymmetric detailing, and you can see more it opens up more than on the Stewart car. I have to say, I'm a little disappointed by the rest of the model, the nose and monocoque section looks too square. The front top edge of the sidepod should be more rounded. The rear wing endplate looks like the normal season one, but the Italian GP version was even more cut down and minimalistic than this model.
Score: 7/10

1/43 Model Review: 2019 Haas VF-19 Monaco GP version (Minichamps)

The Monaco GP will be most remembered for the weekend that paid tribute to three-time World Champion Niki Lauda after his passing away. Many cars carried a fitting tribute, with Haas running a red strip on their shark fin.
The Monaco GP itself never really puts on an entertaining race, and there wasn't much racing to talk about at that stage of the season. Both cars finished, with Grosjean finishing in 10th place for a single point, which are hard to come by for the team in 2019.

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Minichamps 417190620

I believe there are a couple of Monaco GP versions of the 2019 grid due to be released by model makers, so I suspect there will be more to feature soon. On this Minichamps model, I can't see much difference in terms of the shape to make it track specific and it's interesting that these cars are not limited edition with a set number of models made.

Because there's barely any difference from the base model, I'm not going to score it here, but you can read my review here.

1/43 Model Review: 2019 Alfa Romeo C38 (Spark & Minichamps)

Sauber were rebranded as Alfa Romeo, still can't get used to that, and were building on their momentum from last season when Charles Leclerc in particular scored strong results. New drivers in the form of former Ferrari champion Kimi Raikkonen as the experienced hand and benchmark for his teammate, Ferrari young driver, Antonio Giovinazzi. Though this was not the Italian's debut, it was his first full season as a full time driver for the team. Raikkonen was a consistent points scorer, nothing spectacular but he was always in the mix near the top of the midfield. But a run of poor races in the second half of the year has seen the team slide towards the rear of the midfield. Giovinazzi took a while to get going, made a few howlers, including binning the car on the last lap in Belgium. But he bounced back with a good points finish at the Italian Grand Prix and has been a match for Raikkonen for much of the second half of the season.

Both Spark and Minichamps released their cars within a week of each other, though Minichamps have only released Raikkonen's car, but we'll review and compare both in this post.

Spark S6073

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As we've come to expect from both model manufacturers now, the quality is high, particularly as Minichamps have made this model from resin. Comparing both models, they both look very similar from front to back, the shapes looking on point with its dimensions and also squeezing in some of the intricate detail. The bargeboard areas are as complicated as they have ever been in F1, and both manufacturers have done a good job in recreating the detail on this Alfa. One thing I have noticed on the Spark cars is that the endplates are a little smaller than the Minichamps, and the rear wing a little bit smaller. I wouldn't have really noticed unless I'd put them side by side, but the Minichamps version does seem better proportioned from this angle. In terms of the paint and decals, there's not too much difference, owing to the simplicity of the Alfa livery.

Spark

Minichamps

As noted above, from this angle it's a little clearer that the Minichamps front wing is a little larger, or rather, the Spark version is a bit too small. Both have good detail on the nose and it's unique double inlets. Again the Minichamps suspension and vanes are a little fuller in size than the Spark, and again I think I prefer the Minichamps scaling. Nice detail on both sets of aerials and on the halo - masking the helmets that have Kimi's traditionally more complicated patterns. The sidepod opening and general shape of the sidepods are almost identical on these models, and Alfa continue with the segregated airbox arrangement we first saw on a Mercedes back in 2010. Again, both are well recreated. The t-wing on the Spark is tiny, and probably reflects the flimsiness of the real thing - if you ever see a real life onboard, these things are dancing around, it's a wonder they make any positive difference like that. With the fewer vanes on the rear wing endplates, it's nice that Minichamps have modelled real holes, whilst Spark's are just molded nicely, but is one solid structure. 

Spark

Minichamps

I do prefer the Minichamps tyres generally as well, but that's a very minor thing. It's good to see the detail of the lights on the rear wing endplates on both models. Overall, I think I do prefer the Minichamps model, but again, I wouldn't be particularly disappointed with the Spark model.

Spark score: 7/10
Minichamps score: 8/10

Special Editions

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Minichamps have also done a limited edition of the Bahrain GP car.

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Spark S6083

And the lovely Valentines day shakedown livery is produced by Spark and Minichamps 

Spark S6097

Spark S6098

Spark have released an Italian GP version of the Alfa, which features an Italian flag stripe along the top of the engine cover and rear wing end plates. Giovinazzi's car also comes with a pitboard wishing Juan Manuel Correa a speedy recovery after breaking his legs in the crash where Antoine Hubert was lost.

1/43 Model Review: 1997 Stewart SF1 Ford

Background

Three Time World Champion, Jackie Stewart would be funded by Ford to start up a Formula One team on their behalf, running the team with his son, Paul Stewart, and hiring current Autosport analyst, Gary Anderson as designer with Alan Jenkins. The team, through its various incarnations is the current Red Bull Team who are double World Constructors' Champions. Rubens Barrichello drove all three years for the team, and finished second in the Monaco GP in its debut year. The car was able to battle for points positions, but poor reliability hindered the team from scoring more points.

I remember in the UK when the F1 broadcast moved from the BBC over to ITV and I wasn't looking forward to the race being interrupted by adverts, but they did some special features in the build up for the first race, one being a documentary on the new Stewart team. I remember enjoying watching that quite a few times when I was younger.

Minichamps

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Minichamps 430970023

I do miss the days when there were more differences between teammates so from a longshot you could identify which car was which, Magnussen running with a blue headrest and blue on the nose cone. The model itself is quite nice, but it could do with more defined shapes, like the airbox and hte sidepod openings, it's just a little simplified. The tartan looks good and the chrome wheel rims are nicely done. A solid budget model for the time.
Score: 7/10

Tameo

Tameo TMK250

The Tameo kit model is based on the Monaco GP with removable engine cover and wet tyres. A fabulous model, with fantastic detail, even underneath the engine cover is nicely reproduced. I can't find many pictures of this model, so I can't review the model in any detail, but knowing the quality of models that Tameo produce, it looks like a great model.
Score: 9/10

1/43 Model Review: 2019 Ferrari SF90 (Looksmart)

Looksmart have continued to produce excellent Ferrari's again, being priced around £100, more than the resin Minichamps cars. These SF90s are based on the Chinese GP, the so-called 1000th F1 race.

Looksmart LSF1019

Looksmart LSF1020

BBR BBRC225B

I will compare it to the BBR model that has already been released. The first thing to notice for me is that the BBR car is longer, with the rear wing endplate having at more of an inclined angle (more akin to the 2018 rules). The detailing looks of similar high quality from both model makers, and besides the length, proportionally both cars are very similar. 

The front ends of both cars look of very similar high quality, there's good definition of the front wing elements and the turning vanes on the underside of the nose. The complex bargeboard and sidepod leading edge section is well modelled by both brands. The Looksmart car does come with a driver figure, though the helmet remains the same basic one that they've been using for years - it could do with updating. 

The rear of the BBR car seems more defined, from the mini T wing, to the slots in the rear fin.

The only thing that I'm not too keen on is the red on the Looksmart model. It is matte compared to the previous year's model, but I think it needs to be a little less pink. Still, a very nice model.
Score: 8/10

Race Specific Versions

Looksmart LSF1022

Looksmart LSF1021

Looksmart have released a pair of Canadian GP versions of the SF90, where both cars were classified on the podium, with Vettel being penalised after finishing first on the road. The model includes all the changes from the Spanish GP update package, the most noticable being the gap on the shark fin.

Looksmart LSF1023

This is the Belgian GP version, Leclerc's long awaited first victory in F1 and for Ferrari. It was a bitter sweet weekend, with the death of F2 driver and fellow Frenchman, Antoine Hubert. It was only fitting that one of his friends and rival whilst growing up took victory in his honour.

Looksmart LSF1024

This is the Italian GP version, where Leclerc is the latest Ferrari driver to win at the team's home race to emotional scenes. There was a great battle for the lead with Leclerc fending off the World Champion to claim a popular victory. 

Looksmart LSF1026

This is the Singapore GP version of the car, where Leclerc did everything right to earn victory, but Vettel got the favoured pit strategy and leapfrogged into the lead to seal his only win of the season. 

2019 Japanese GP Review

The Japanese Grand Prix was not the most exciting of races, with Typhoon Hagibis disrupting the order of running. FP3 was cancelled and qualifying moved to Sunday morning, gave teams less preparation than normal. Kubica and Magnussen crashed out, and Hulkenberg had hydraulic issues so there wasn't as much time as normal to get these cars back out for the race.

Ferrari stole the show again, showing some surprising pace in Q3 when it mattered and Mercedes could not respond. Red Bull were a little disappointing that they weren't a bit closer, but Albon and Verstappen setting the exact same time was good to see. Vettel took pole position ahead of his team-mate who could only acknowledge that Vettel did a better job.

The race was by and large decided at the first two corners. Vettel moved before the lights went out, but was lucky to catch it without moving out of his box and being stationary when the lights went out, all of which was different when Raikkonen did the same thing in Russia. Vettel got away with a penalty, but didn't get away particularly well understandably. Leclerc also made a poor start, whilst Bottas produced one of his rocket starts, blasting into a clear lead. Verstappen was alongside Leclerc into turn 2, but the Ferrari driver was caught out by a loss of grip when Vettel came across the front of him and Leclerc went wide taking Verstappen out. He was given a five-second penalty after the race was finished, and Verstappen retired the car a few laps later.

Leclerc's damaged car did not come into the pits at the end of the first lap and should have been given the flag to pit and get his car repaired. Instead, the front wing end plate came off taking off Hamilton's wing mirror and lodging some of it in Norris' McLaren brake ducts ruining his race. Given how close it came to Hamilton's cockpit, you have to say this was a near miss that could have easily been avoided and could have been much, much worse. Some of Leclerc's passing on the way back up the grid was awesome, avoiding a late defensive block from Verstappen, passing Kvyat and Gasly into Spoon, and just about clearing Kimi's Alfa Romeo into 130R, brilliant.

There was a bit of back and forth between Hamilton and his team over strategy and one wonders whether he could have pulled off the one stop in the end and Mercedes could have ended up with a probably 1-2. Instead Hamilton was given fresher tyres to chase Vettel on a track that was difficult to overtake on. Vettel did well to defend, and time his overtakes on the lapped cars, giving himself DRS when Hamilton looked closest. With the chequered flag error that came out a lap too early, imagine if Hamilton had gotten past on the last lap only for it to have not counted.

Mercedes took their sixth consecutive Constructors' Championship and made certain that one of their drivers will win the Drivers' Championship. This Mercedes era ought to be celebrated for the incredibly professional job that they have been doing, the cars remain quick, generally well set up and run, good strategy, on form drivers, fantastic reliability and few mistakes have all propelled the team to a dominant position. The competition are getting closer, their cars faster on occasions, but their challenges have not been sustainable, their mistakes frequent and costly and their strategy calls questionable.

Bottas had a good weekend, on a driver's track, he out-qualified Hamilton and ran away with the race after he took the lead. Mercedes had a race pace advantage, but he made sure Ferrari were never in the question, that's the kind of Bottas we want to see more consistently.

Magnussen's and Hulkenberg's start though! Magnussen started at the back with Grosjean in Q3, and Kevin passed his teammate at the start. Shame there's not that much more to write about the Haas boys after that.

Albon did not have a great start and had to battle his way past the McLarens. Once again, we don't have a direct comparison with his team-mate.

Carlos Sainz made the most of his weekend, and looked closer to the top three and further ahead of the rest of the midfield. Norris, as discussed above, was unlucky to have to pit early to clear debris and later was caught out by a late dive from Albon into the final chicane. Thankfully no real damage done, and no silly penalties issued.

Perez had a good weekend, albeit crashing out of the last lap that wasn't counted. He could have given Gasly a bit more room in their battle for 8th place.

Ricciardo made a great recovery drive, helped by his team-mate waving him through, but he made some great overtakes, had good pace and finished a well deserved 6th place (after Leclerc's penalties).

Gasly had another strong performance, qualifying in 8th place and finishing 9th, miles ahead of his teammate who had a lacklustre weekend. Did well to keep it together at the end when he had suspension problems, and in the end his tangle with Perez counted for nothing.

GP4: 1994 Ligier JS39B (Australian GP) WIP 3

In the last of my walkaround work in progress shots of the Ligier, I concentrate on this post on the central and rear parts of the 3D car I have shaped. 

For my 1994 cars, I've been fairly minimal in making the inside parts under the engine cover, but for where some of the cars that have holes cut in them, you can see through the airbox. One of the problems with modelling this is in GP4 you can get some flickering if the internal parts are too close to the surface.

The engine cover changed a bit for the late season, the hump at the back begins much sooner, and there is an additional bump above it (this is a bit clearer in the previous screenshot). The top of the sidepod is flat and not curved or at an angle, so that was quite simple to model.

Moving to the rear of the car, and we have a new diffuser. The outer parts of the diffuser are from my 1994 McLaren, with the exhaust integrated into the top part of it. The central diffuser section is quite unique, with three seperate elements, and the top central part is transparent so that you can see the rain light. The jack points are always a fun bit of detail to put in. As so much of the underside of this car is exposed, though still difficult to see with it being under shadow, I've put a bit of detail on the gearbox, the suspension mounting points and the actual suspension springs themselves.

Here you can see the opening at the rear of the sidepod, and you can see the rear suspension and rear wheel hub.

On the late season Renault engined cars, and into 1995, there is this small inlet, almost like a periscope sticking out of the engine cover. I found someone selling a late season rear wing endplate, so there were a couple of nice reference photos from that. Again, you can't see it on the screenshot, but I've put a bit of detail on the rear wing. It's interesting from the front view, the main black element covers the middle element, looking like they are running quite low wing. If you remember my model review of the Spark model, I complained that they basically only modelled the top element and coloured it all white, but I can kind of see how that mistake happened having inspected various photos.

I hope to get this car mapped fairly soon, and I will release the car as is for anyone who has the talent and time to paint this car.

GP4: 1994 Ligier JS39B (Australian GP) WIP 2

In this blogpost, I'll do a walkaround some of the details of the 1994 car. Buried away in the Ligier museum, there are a few good detail shots of the car on my usual resource site http://www.gurneyflap.com/ligiermuseum.html

Ligier ran quite a small front wing endplate at the beginning of the season, but upgraded to quite a big endplate for the end of the season. I've put the wireframe on so that you can see there is quite bump half way down the endplate, I'm not quite sure why. The under side on the leading edge curves outwards, before directing the air to the inside of the front wheels on the trailing edge. So it's not quite as straight forward as I had initially thought, but I'm always pleased to add the detail onto my 3D model. The front wing is pretty basic, the main plane is raised in the centre section, a smoother version of their 1993 concept. The two white dots on the nose I'm not sure what they were for exactly, but again it's always nice to add a few details on when I spot them. 

The nose itself is an interesting shape and one where my version differs from my resources. The flat side does not go all the way to the tip of the nose, instead it is rounded for half the width of the front wing. It also sits higher than the early season resource models I've been referring to, and is actually not too dissimilar in height from the 1993 car which was slightly raised. I also added a hole at the trailing edge of the nose cone for the steering arm as per the real car. 

The front suspension is actually lifted from the 1994 Williams, just amended in position to fit this car. The brake duct is new, although I could not find any good shots of the brake ducts from the late season car, but I put on quite a generic one. The mounting points are different from the Williams, but quite straight forward on this car. For the front lower wishbone, I had to cut out a section of the monocoque, again in a similar way to the Williams. It's not very clear on this screenshot, but I've put quite a bit of detail into the section underneath the nose.



Ligier run a double pitot tube, one directly behind the other. The team added bargeboards mid-season, it's quite a simple rectangular shape, though it has a bit cut off for the suspension arm to pass through. There are also a couple of bumps on the monocoque to factor in, the one above the diagonal suspension arm, which I had to put a hole in as well, and there are two small bumps on top of the monocoque, in between the pitot tube and the aerial. For me, it's quite a fun challenge to get the normals working well with the flat side of the monocoque and the curved section along the top, which dissipates as you get towards the opening of the sidepod and the cockpit. You can see the curved bodyline at the sidepod opening which wasn't easy to get right. Actually, I departed from my normal method of doing body lines, simple having detached indents to save time and actually is slightly more effective.

The mirrors sit quite low on the Ligier, but when I modelled the rear wing elements, I realised it had a very small gap to see through. The Ligier had quite a large and rounded cockpit opening, particularly along the sides. It means much more of the driver body (taken from my 1995 Ferrari) and the seat is exposed. The dash and steering wheel mounts are all covered by the top of the monocoque, and though the rules threated to change this arrangement (in accidents heads were hitting the front of the cockpit), it didn't get fully implemented until 1995 (as far as I can tell). From the photos that I have, there was simply just a screen, or for the museum car most of the cockpit had been stripped. Other cars have done a generic dashboard model, but I've decided to follow the pictures and just have a small rectangular screen and one button for the fire extinguisher. The visor (coloured in black here) is also an upside down L shape, which has been a feature of Ligier cars in the early 90s.

GP4: 1994 Ligier JS39B (Australian GP) WIP 1

For my next GP4 car from 1994, I've manage to complete the build in just a couple of weeks, partly down to some sick days I had, but I went for the Ligier due to its simplicity and a couple of other good references available to me. I thought the early season GP4 car by Mckey and Oggo was a good base, but needed updating to late season spec and could have done with some more details. 

I also found lying about on my old files a copy of the CTDP car to use as reference, again from the early season. It was optimised for F1C/rFactor so the scaling is a bit different, but it was a useful resource. 

CTDP 1994 Ligier JS39B

The 1994 car was a B spec version of the 1993 car, so the monocoque is pretty much identical with very few changes, and the one in GP4 is excellent too. 

RF900R, Adry77 & Oggo's 1993 Ligier JS39

GP4 1994 Mod (Mckey & Oggo)

So I thought, great, this should be easy and like the 1995 Ferrari, I had lots of references to follow. But then I started looking at some photos and realised it wasn't quite as simple as I had imagined. Apologies for the GP4 Builder shots, I don't have anything better to show preview shots in at the moment. 

As mentioned before in my blog, the rules were amended mid-season, and that led to a number of changes, as well as the usual in-season developments. The car was raised from the ground a bit to accommodate the plank, and if you played the GP4 1994 mod, you'll notice Mckey's car ran pretty low to the ground. The team introduced bargeboards, a new front wing endplate at the front of the car.

The engine cover had to incorporate holes as part of the rule changes, and the late season car also had an extra hump at the rear that was not present on the early season car. Like most the teams on the grid, they introduced new rear wing winglets by the rear wheels.

Moving to the rear of the car, the diffuser rules also changed, meaning that I couldn't use the other cars as a reference on that area. Ligier also removed the bodywork by the rear suspension, so a lot of the gearbox and rear suspension mountings are visible. On the rear wing, they curved the lower section and also introduced a straight wing in the middle too. So quite a lot of the rear of the car is new compared to the early season and 1993 car that I had references for.

I'm quite pleased with how this car ended up and all that is left is the mapping and the painting.
Coming up is a walkaround talking through some of the details I've put in and where almost every part of the car is different from the reference models I've used.