This is part 2 of my walkaround, as we begin to look at some of the details of this 1996 Footwork Arrows FA17 shaped by me, with Soulbringer, Kedy89 and AUS_Doug all helping to compelte this car. This car forms part of the 1996 mod for GP4, and has subsequently been converted to other games such as rFactor 2 and Assetto Corsa.
Footwork ran quite a bulky nose cone and monocoque section. The front wing supports are slightly angled back, and the front wing endplates are looking to generate an outwash effect, whilst most the other teams were looking to direct the air towards the inside of the front tyre.
Footwork also ran a small barge board in the front suspension, looking to stop any turbulent air from the front wheels from disrupting the flow under the nose. I've shown the wireframe in the shot above, again you can see how I put lots of rows of polygons to get the right normals. You can see the body lines too have lots of rows of polygons too. The top of the cockpit, above the driver's legs, is almost indented.
The main barge board is quite small in comparison, very similar to the one it ran the previous year. Behind that and Footwork are trying to maximise the undercut at the bottom of the cockpit section, an Adrian Newey concept from his March days.
I was in the routine to creating unique cockpit dashboards at that time, though this was quite primitive back then. I'm glad that Kedy has brought some colour to the buttons. You can see the odd indent on the top of the cockpit clearer from this angle, presumably encouraging the air downwards towards the sidepods and under the car.
Footwork also ran remarkably high cockpit side protection. These were not always easy to get right, but I enjoyed getting this to look smooth and seamless and the reflections look good off it too. The head rest behind the driver, usually I wouldn't join it to the main shape, but here I went the extra mile and blended it in. I've also included the hole on the top of the rollover bar, this was for the cranes to wrap around the rollover bar so that it could be easily craned away.
That's it for this post, more to come soon.
