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.
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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.