GP4: 1994 Ligier JS39B all the versions (preview)

Firstly a Happy New Year to you.

Since the release of my 1994 Ligier JS39B based on the Australian GP, I went back to the car to create the various little changes starting the Spanish GP, the fifth round of the 1994 season. The reason I started there is because the existing GP4 1994 mod has all the versions of each car up for the first four rounds. 

At the Spanish GP, rushed rule changes were brought to force to slow the speed of the cars down. This was the first Grand Prix where there was a speed limit and the mechanics had to remain in their pit-garages unless their car was due in for a pitstop. This was in response to Michele Alboreto's Minardi having one of his wheels come off after their pitstop, striking some mechanics, including Nigel Stepney of Ferrari, the Minardi car striking some mechanics on its way to a stand still. Watching footage of cars going full speed out of the pitlane looks so wrong nowadays. 

Anyway, to the car, and the obvious changes for Spain was that the front wing end-plates no longer extend behind the front wheel, and the diffusers were all cut down in size. Actually the teams arrived in protest, with various accidents occurring in testing due to the swift changes to these highly intricate aerodynamic machines. Basically it wasn't safe to rush these safety-induced regulation changes, which could create more crashes and injuries rather than less. It didn't help that Andrew Montermini had a huge shunt in practice, with his feet visible when the car settled down. 

Spanish GP

The cars continued with the new rules, basically because the poorer teams (i.e. almost all the teams on the grid bar the top four) had already cut up their old diffusers to suit the new rules and had no option to run them to the old rules. History lesson over, and here's the Ligier as it appeared in the Spanish GP. I have to admit, the mid-season diffuser that Ligier ran, I couldn't find any reasonable photos of it to be able to make it and the only source I had was from a 1/43 scale model, so it's running the diffuser as from the late end of the season. 

Canadian GP

More new rules at the Canadian GP, the main visible one being the hole in the airbox. Different teams interpreted this differently, with Ligier and Tyrrell perhaps being the most extreme and making their cars look like they were from the 1980s with just a rollover hoop. This version only lasted one race. 

The other minor change was the fuel cap is on the left hand side of the car. 

French GP

Back to Europe, the middle of the European summer, and it's the first non-tobacco livery of the year. Most the weekend, the team ran with all white sidepods, but decided on advertising their own team name in the Grand Prix itself. 

The engine cover received some work, with the holes now being at the rear of the engine cover, although the screenshot doesn't show it, it was one long thing hole along the back end of the airbox. Also a new rear wing assembly, a mid-downforce configuration compared to the previous two races. 

Being a French team, at a French track, Panis ran an onboard camera. 

British GP

A week later, the cars ran in the same specification for the British Grand Prix, albeit with amended non-tobacco livery and the fuel cap returning to the right hand side of the car. 

German GP

The German Grand Prix brought more rule changes. The car is higher, with a plank underneath - if you ran my GP4 cars side-by-side, you'll see that is the case with my cars. The car would feature much larger front wing endplates, this being the specification they will run for the rest of the season. 

As the Hockenheimring is a low-downforce track, I removed the gurney flaps from the front wing. The rear wing is also visibly much smaller, running just 2 elements on the upper section rather than the usual 3. 

The Ligier also had a completely new engine cover. The smooth bump around the Renault logo is now much more shrink-wrapped, with two smaller bumps rather than one big one. The hole at the rear is  now separated into two sections. 

Up to this race, the Ligiers were hopelessly slow, the only two things going for it was the Renault engine, the same as front-runners Williams were using, and the car had bulletproof reliability. Those were the perfect combination for the German Grand Prix, as many runners retired, Panis and Bernard earned themselves podium finishes. 

Hungarian GP

Onto Hungary, a high downforce, narrow twisty track, so on goes a big fat rear wing. The rear wings with an additional element that hung out at the front of the rear wing, common features on almost every car at the beginning of the year, were now banned. The rear wing on this Ligier looks like a barn door, there's so much of it! 

Perhaps after the success in Germany, the cars featured onboard cameras. The other change was the rear brake ducts, no longer are they the periscope ones, the new ones are much more neatly tucked away. Panis would earn another point at this race.

Ligier had actually agreed to sell the team, with Benetton's team principal Flavio Briatore and Tom Walkinshaw investing in the team at the beginning of the year. Flavio, over the course of the season, essentially handed the running of the team to Tom and his TWR team, eventually selling his stake over to TWR. With that arrangement, Frank Dernie, working at Benetton at the time, started working on the Ligier, so some of the solutions to the Benetton were mirrored by the Ligier team. The front wing end plates, the twin holes at the rear of the airbox and the triple rear wing with curvy lower elements all found their way onto the both cars. The cars would look near identical in 1995. 

The same car ran at Belgium, so nothing new to show here. It's interesting with the butchering of Eau Rouge, the team opted to stick with their ultra-high downforce configuration. 

Italian GP

Onto Monza, and another low downforce track. The team introduced their version of a three element rear wing, creating much less drag. Not much else to report in terms of changes and there was no repeat success for the real thing either. 

Portuguese GP

The rest of the season would see the car run in pretty much the same configuration, with the new high downforce version of the rear wing as mentioned earlier. Williams had pioneered the anhedral (triangular shaped) lower rear wing at the beginning of the year, allowing the ends of the wing to interact with the diffuser and also reducing drag. In turn, you do lose a bit of overall downforce, but I think they look pretty. Running with the additional middle element on the rear wing did allow them to run much less angle on the upper main plane. 

European GP

Race 14 was originally intended to be in Argentina, but the Buenos Aires track was not complete in time and the race was given to Jerez, the second Spanish race at the popular test track, dubbed the European GP. 

The team switched out Eric Bernard for Johnny Herbert, the Englishman becoming ever more frustrated at the Lotus team. But a good showing at Monza reminded us just what a good job he's been doing in a terrible car, and he was rewarded with a promotion to Ligier. Bernard would contest just one race for Lotus before being dropped for pay drivers. 

Herbert would beat his team-mate, the reigning F3000 champion of 1993, finishing just ahead of Panis in the race. Impressing the management with this performance, he was recalled to Benetton for a test and then a race seat for the remainder of the season. 

Japanese GP

With two races to go, test driver Franck Lagorce (because Eric Bernard hardly shone in his performances to recall him back I guess) was given the race seat. Panis ended the year with a fifth placed finish. Panis would end up 9th in the Drivers Standings, and the team finished 6th.

In case you missed it, v1 of the Australian GP car is available on this