GP4: 1994 Ligier JS39B Australian GP Version download

Though the carshape was created back in October 2019, I finally got around to mapping and painting this car. Watch out for more versions of this car coming soon, but for now, enjoy the Australian GP version. 

 

1/43 2019 Bburago Models

Bburago continue to produce their low-budget models/toys, a strange blend of detail and the ability to play with it without hurting yourself or your child eating any bits off it. Adding to the Ferrari cars, comes the Mercedes and the Red Bull versions. As much as I critique models on this blog, I'm glad there's a variety of detail, and more importantly budget. It's not like Bburago have the monopoly to make models of these cars, so I'm all for that. 

2019 Mercedes W11

Bburago BU38036-BOT

First up, we have the Mercedes. Ignoring that the front wing is drooping down at the front edge, they've done a great job in capturing the essence of the W11 shape, from the rounded nose tip, the cape, the high front suspension, the bargeboards and sidepod opening, a great halo and rear wing. There are dimples all over it, on the rear wing endplates, bargeboards, and floor owing to some of the detail on the real cars.

The nose horns have been trimmed and the mirrors point in a slightly random upward position. On this particular model, the engine cover doesn't seem to be on properly, but that's just this particular Bottas model rather than a common issue, as you can see on the Hamilton version below, it fits much better.

I like what they've done with the rear end. They play to their strengths, in that the detailed areas are in dark carbon, so you can't really see the detail on the real car as it's zooming by on your screens, but the general shape is excellently done on the bargeboards and the floor. 

Bburago BU38036-HAM

What impresses me most is the livery, I really like it and it elevates the whole model for me. Thinking back to the mid-90s when I was buying budget Onyx models, with their decals peeling off, the comparatively simple liveries applied wonkily, these liveries have a precision about them that impresses me. My slight nit-pick is that they could have painted the inside of the airbox black. 

Score: 6/10 

2019 Red Bull RB15

Bburago BU38139-VERS

The Red Bulls have tended to start the year with relatively simple and uncomplicated aerodynamics, but compare that to the end of the season, it's usually very highly developed. And that trend is true in its performance, in general, they are more competitive at the end of the year, sneaking a few victories along the way, and 2019 was no exception. And so this model looks a lot more basic than the Ferrari and Mercedes models. Couple that with the dark matte finish, this looks the most toy-like of the three.  

Bburago BU38050

That's not to say that the car doesn't share some of the things I like about the Ferrari and Mercedes. The car has a good front wing, its unique nose, the little S duct outlet at the top of the monocoque, the boomerang on the bargeboards, and a nice rear end. Again the decals look great, nicely detailed, accurate, well applied. 

Score: 6/10 

1/43 Model Review: 2019 Williams FW42 (Minichamps)

Williams were looking to bounce back after a a poor year at the back of the grid. The Martini sponsorship had elapsed and a new livery for the season saw the car blend a bright blue and white, whilst Rokit phones became their title sponsor. Out was Stroll and Sirotkin, the 'pay drivers' and in comes the impressive Mercedes junior driver George Russell and Robert Kubica, nearly 10 years after his horrific rally accident. Expectations that Paddy Lowe, fresh from Mercedes, could lead the technical team to improve the car. Sadly the opposite happened. The car was late and it was terribly slow, confining it to the rear of the grid. The whole saga and season was rather embarrassing for the proud team, truth be told, but they do garner a lot of support from well-wishers in and out of the paddock.

George Russell dominated in all the comparisons compared to his teammate, except for one stat which matters, which was points scored. Russell was unfortunate to not score that point in Germany after the disqualifications of the Alfa Romeos, but it was great to have some good news in a rather depressing season. It wasn't the fairy tale year we'd all hoped for in Kubica, but it is no less a triumphant story of super-human endeavour that got him back into F1 and (more or less) on the pace after the injuries he'd sustained. He didn't ask for sympathy, instead he more than earned the respect of everyone. 

In 2020, the Williams family took the somewhat inevitable decision of selling their team to a group of investors, Dorilton Capital, with the family bowing out of the sport shortly after. But the team did sign the new concorde agreement and the Williams name will remain for the foreseeable future on a stable financial foundation. The FW43 was more competitive and I wish nothing but the best for their future. 

Minichamps 417190088

Onto the model and we only have a Minichamps offering of this car, and no special versions that I know of yet. Again, the model makers have done a fine job in reproducing the car in 1/43 scale. You can see the Mercedes influence, the cape under the nose, the barge-board area, the shape of the sidepods and the raised front suspension. 

I do like the cardboard inlay that you get with the Williams cars, with the black silhouette of the real car behind. The livery looks great for me, but the carbon grey does make it look a bit plasticy. That's not to say they've picked the wrong colour, it's just the matte finish looks more like a toy than a model. I think they could have done a better job on Kubica's helmet livery. 

Overall, a nice model from Minichamps. A nice blend of a great shape, a nice livery and finish, nice detailing on the rims and the bargeboards and the rear of the car. 

Score:8/10

Model Updates - first 2020 preseason cars by Spark

Hey model fans,

I hope you're keeping safe and healthy during this very strange year. 

I was so glad that we do have a 2020 season, and I've been so grateful for a shuffled calendar. 

No doubt the global pandemic has affected the model makers, but I'm glad to see that Spark have started releasing some 2020 F1 models, based on pre-season testing. So I've started a 2020 model summary page. I've been keeping the 2019 model summary page up to date too. 

With the new rules on the horizon, most teams have simply updated their 2019 cars for the 2020 season, with Racing Point being the only team to try a new concept, and it seems to be paying off for them. Now that the same chassis needs to be retained for the 2021 season, we'll be looking at these shapes for a while. With the global pandemic affecting revenues, some teams like Haas will not bring any upgrades to the car in 2020, only specific race setups. 

GP4: 1994 Lotus 109 WIP update 1

Hi again. It's been about a month since I last worked on my Haas which has just been released. In that time I've mapped my 1993 Tyrrell 021, it's only taken 9 years to do! It's now on somebody else's to do list. 

I nearly took that momentum and map one of my 1994 cars, but I couldn't resist going back to shaping. 

I decided to go back to 1994. Actually, I had made a start on another car, but I decided not to go back to it, but start a brand new project. It was this, the 1994 Lotus 109 Mugen-Honda. 

I think it had one of the best liveries that season, and it was unfortunately the last classic Team Lotus car, although Lotus made a return of sorts in 2010. This car had so many drivers, Johnny Herbert, Alex Zanardi, Pedro Lamy, Philippe Adams, Eric Bernard and Mika Salo, have I missed anyone out? 

There's some more history in my model blog here

But it's July 2020, and it's been two weeks since Alex Zanardi had another horrible accident. His life is a mixture of triumph (CART Champion and Paralympic Gold medalist) and horrific accidents (Spa 1993, losing his legs in a CART race and now this). As of the time of writing he's still in an induced coma from a hand-bike accident when colliding with a truck. I hope you make a recovery #ForzaAlex.

It goes without saying that when this car is completed, it will be dedicated to Alex. 

Lotus began the 1994 season with the C spec version of the 107, which began life in 1992. One of the new Lotus 109's was ready by the Spanish Grand Prix and Johnny Herbert drove that car, whilst Zanardi had to settle for the 107C at the Spanish and Canadian GP. The 109 was based on the 107, so there are many similarities and I could use the 107C as a guide for my own car. 

The GP4 107C is by Paolo RF900R (who is still creating excellent cars from the 1990s for ASR Formula), which Oggo brought into GP4. The cars for the 1993 mod are great, but my only complaint is the lack of consistency with the scaling between the cars. So the first thing I did for my 109 was to base it on the proportions of my other 1994 cars. In reality, the 109 has a shorter wheelbase, but in GP4, my 109 will have a longer wheelbase. 

I started out with the wings on this car, they are pretty unique and I enjoyed recreating them. I probably went a little overboard with the details on the rear wing, whilst the front wing is pretty straight forward. Like the McLaren, the front wing end plates have a small horizontal element at the rear. The suspension is lifted off my Williams and Ligier and re-positioned. The main chassis came together quite quickly, the longest part was the nose. You'll notice in these screens there's a slight bulge, which isn't immediately obvious on pictures, with the livery hiding it very well. My shape kind of reminds me of a beluga whale. 

The Lotus also has uniquely shaped barge-boards, compared to other cars from that season it looks like it was put on backwards. The mirrors are also quite pyramid shaped, which I also like. The car also featured a unique interpretation of putting  hole in the engine cover, adopting holes to the side near the rear end. 

With the car coming together quite quickly, I started to get a little carried away with the detail, and below is the result. Now when I started making 1994 cars, I had consciously decided not to spend too much time making engine parts, rather just sticking to the gearbox detail, but I got a little ambitious. The odd thing is that I've only created the rear half of the engine. The reason being that from some angles you can see a bit more into the engine from the engine cover holes, and also I'm going to put a cooling hole in the rear of the sidepod, so it would be nice to see in. In terms of internals, this is the most detail I've put in on any GP4 car.

The car is still a work in progress, I need to finish the rear of the chassis, the cockpit needs a seat and details adding, and I'm going to add some more details on the side of the gearbox. There's a few more details to add here and there, and then body lines. 

I hope you enjoyed this update, I'll post more shots when the car is hopefully complete. 

GP4: 2020 Haas VF-20 by Fongu & Excalibur Released

Here it is, the completed 2020 Haas VF-20: 

Pre-season:

2020 season package:

Into the archive:

- Haas F1 team VF-20_readme file ( tyres positions and rear lights positions included)

- 2 cars (Grosjean and Magnussen)

- Tex files (Launch and Barcelona pre-season testings liveries included)

Arnaud (Excalibur) has done a great job in the presentation as always, with fixing my mapping and doing a great job on the textures. I'm really pleased with the result. We hope you like it too.

Launch Livery:

Testing Livery:

GP4: 2020 Haas VF20 WIP 2

I've finished shaping the Haas car in recent days. Here's some shots of the car before I started attacking it with bodylines and final small details. The car came close to the GP4 polygon limit of just over 65,000 faces, and I've managed to finish the car with about 100 polygons to spare and no reduction in detail, so I'm quite pleased about that.

Not since 2011, when I created the Ferrari F150th, that I have created a 'modern' F1 car, having been focused on 1990s cars. So it was noticeable that with all the more complex winglets and details that everything took a while longer. For example, the 1990s cars had 3 flaps on the front wing and maybe a vane or two underneath, but now there are 5 elements with more complex curves, with curved holding devices and tyre sensors. 

Obviously the recent attention on the bargeboards area has sprouted so many extra vanes, with the Haas in particularly having lots of different elements. Thankfully there were just a development of the previous year's car, so it did not take too long to decipher photos. I decided to go for the gills on the side of the cockpit, as per the launch version and I almost regretted it when I was running low of polygons towards the end. I hope it adds just a little added interest as they tested various configurations of it during testing. 

For 1990s cars, I would usually be spending lots of time trying to brighten up photos and take a best guess, but thankfully at the launch of the real car in Barcelona, there were some very clear shots of the diffuser. The only element I did not include was the slotted vanes on the underside. The rear fins are unique on the Haas, with the S shaped vents. They seemed to have eliminated any vents at the leading edge of the rear endplate, which suited me when I was modelling it. 

From a more aerial shot of my car, you can see a bit more of the detail on the floor, the slotted vents and all their associated vanes and flips. In order to get all that detail, I had to be economical on the main shape whilst still keeping it smooth, which I think I was able to achieve. 

Since those shots have been taken, I have now mapped the car, split up all the parts to work in GP4 and put a very quick livery on it. The car is now with my friends at RSCT to put the livery on it, I look forward to the results. Until then, here's a quick screenshot of the car ingame. 

GP4: Updated 1994 Cars Download Links

Whilst I'm busy with my other projects, I wanted to share with you my WIP cars that can be played in GP4. There's quite a lot released. 

GP4 1994 Ligier JS39B

EDIT: the complete car is available here

GP4 1994 Williams FW16B

EDIT: the complete car is available here

GP4 1994 McLaren MP4/9

This is an updated Work in Progress release of my 1994 McLaren. I have put the basic livery on the car, and I’ve done a quick AO map, baking shadows onto the shape. The car has changed since I done the shadows, like where I’ve moved the camera forward, so the shadows need updating but it’s a start. **update, I've fixed this now*** There's been some small updates on the car too. 

EDIT: the complete car is available here

I've also reuploaded a mirror to Loren's late season Minardi M194 which includes a mid-season French GP version and a Hungarian GP version. These are all excellent low poly updates, maybe one day I will get around to doing a higher quality version.

French GP:

Hungarian GP:

GP4: 1995 Ferrari 412T2 now available to download

Today, I release my 1995 Ferrari 412T2 for GP4, one of my favourite cars from the 1990s. The download link is at the bottom of this post.

The car comes ready to replace the original car from the 1995 mod, with low downforce shape and non-tobacco textures, as well as early and late season variations of the airbox logos.

My thanks goes to David Marques who did much more than just paint this car and really making it look fantastic. The car and textures are fully compatible with the F1C car. 

David was able to remap much of the extra parts of the car, including the cockpit and the parts at the rear of the car which enabled them to have a much better texture. 

This is also my first venture into AO shadow maps. I think it looks OK, but there is room for improvement for future works. 

Overall, I'm really pleased with how this car worked out. I hope you enjoy it. 

You can read my previous blog posts on my inspiration and build diary here:  https://fongugp4.blogspot.com/search/label/412T2

GP4: Haas VF20 WIP 1

I thought I would take a break from my 90's GP4 cars, and at the beginning of launch season, I thought I would tackle a 2020 car, and why not the first car that released pictures. It's now the beginning of May and the car is still a little way off.

The Haas VF20 is a mix between the 2019 Ferrari and the 2019 Haas. 

As with the 1995 Ferrari 412T2, I used a mixture of the high poly models of the Ferrari and Haas (around 90,000 faces) from Codemasters 2019 game and also the lower poly versions from Real Racing (around 32,000 faces), and I'm aiming to be somewhere in the middle. 

Work begins at the front of the car, with the nose from the 2019 Haas and the front wings from the 2019 Ferrari. 

As the car developed, I worked on the monocoque and main chassis structure. The rollover bar is mainly the Ferrari whilst the front of the sidepods and vanes are from the VF19. The actual sidepods themselves are unique, and it took a few goes for me to get them as I liked. The rear end of the car is very similar on both models. Front wing end plates have been added, it's basically the late season Ferrari one. 

Having completed the chassis (bar minor tweaks and improvements), I started working on the rear wing. The little indent on the top trailing edge of the rear wing is also unique, with the 2019 cars featuring only one dip in the middle, whereas the 2020 VF20 contains two of these dips. This is also the first halo I've created and I rushed them a bit, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I also started the first iteration of the boomerang wing, which featured on the late season version of the VF19. It took me a few goes to get this right. I also started work on the suspension elements, again mostly a direct copy from the 2019 Haas car. 

The front suspension upper arm at the front is now two separate elements, with a larger surface area to direct the air more. It reminded me of the late 2006 Super Aguri SA06 that I modelled years ago. The front camera was added, along with the top elements of the rear suspension and the beginnings of the super complicated bargeboard and floor areas, along with the triple boomerang that's unique on the 2020 grid. 

Below, this is the latest progress on the car, a lot more complete, but still a long way to go. I felt like the last month I've just been making flips and slots and they are taking forever to model! The vanes under the nose are from the Ferrari, with some additional vanes, and then the bargeboard area is largely a development of the 2019 Haas. The floor along with side of the sidepods is essentially the 2019 Ferrari except the very rear which is a bit more unique to the 2020 Haas. But as you can see it's just endless slots, managing the boundary layers and creating vortices and I can't wait to get to the end of it. 

I put a bit more detail into the cockpit, basing it more on the Real Racing 3 model which seems to have a more accurate cockpit than Codemasters which has a generic one. The mirrors are new, and they look very similar to the 2020 Ferrari. The sidepods and airbox have been refined as has the rear end. The diffuser is from the 2019 Ferrari with changes. The brakeducts have also been added, the rear one in particular has at least 9 winglets attached to it. 

Hope you like it so far. There's still someway to go - I've written a to-do list and it's too long to post here. But when its complete, I'll post some close up shots. 

Stay tuned for some more GP4 news coming soon. 

Hello...

Hey, I just wanted to say that even though this blog has not had an update in 2 months, I do still intend to put up more posts soon.

In the meantime, I've been keeping an eye on some of the latest model releases and I've updated my 2019 page with a thumbnail of each of the 2019 models which you can view here: https://fongugp4.blogspot.com/p/2019-f1-articles.html
There's a few new models that I am yet to review, so look out for them to come in the next few weeks.

On the GP4 front, I continue to chip away at my modelling. I've taken a little break from 1994 cars and decided to work on a different era car. It's taking a bit longer than expected, but I've also been busier than usual. I'm not far off completing it and I will share some shots of my latest work soon.

In the meantime, I was excited to hear of a couple of 1990s cars being announced for the 2020 version of Codemaster's F1 series. They are adding some of Schumacher's classic cars, and I can't wait to see them as the previews looks super accurate - perhaps I will use them as inspiration to update GP4 versions in the same way I did with the 1995 Ferrari 412T2. These are the 1991 Jordan 191, the 1994 Benetton B194 and the 1995 Benetton B195.

1/43 Model Review: 2019 Racing Point RP19 (Minichamps)

Hot off the heels of the Spark release of this model of the Racing Point RP19, the Minichamps version has also landed. 

The first thing that I noticed about the model is how much more vibrant the colours are compared to the Spark model. In terms of the shape of the model, there's very little to choose between the two model makers. 

Minichamps 417190011

Minichamps 417190018

The other very minor difference is the placement of transition of colours from the inside to the outside of the rear wing endplates, and I do prefer the Minichamps attention to detail there. Having said that, there is more detail on the floor on the Spark model.

With not much to choose between the two, the score for both models is the same.
Score: 8/10

Special Editions:

Minichamps 447190011

Just 150pcs were made for the German model shop of the Bahrain GP version of the car, which I think looks great in the pink box.