GP4: 2021 Alpine A521 - download

Previously, Hega had painted the 2021 Alpine livery onto the 2020 Renault car by Excalibur.
I then added a couple of race specific liveries last month. 

This was the last 2021 car to receive any shape updates from the rule changes, which changed the floors and diffusers mainly. 

Now, I have replaced the floor, diffuser and the bargeboard areas, and with very minor changes to the textures, I can present to you the full 2021 car.  

This is my final contribution to 2021 in GP4, and I'm quite proud of the final product, as found in the 2021 mod, which has been tremendously put together by Carl_gpgames. 

The highlight of the mods ought to be the cars, and I think the quality has picked up in accuracy and scaling. That's in no small part thanks to Excalibur and Hega and Isaint. 

Then there's the supporting wheels and rims (Hega) and helmets (Jvinu, Jsoria and others), that were further enhanced this season for the first time thanks to Oggo, that allowed us to run team specific rims and driver specific helmet shapes, all that adds to the realism. 

Carl_gpgames has done great work throughout the year to put the mod together (both CSM and non CSM options), some new tracks from prblanco and co, some new tweaks like non-refuelling by prblanco and 32bobo32, new physics from carl_gpgames and prblanco, new pitcrews and marshalls from 32bobo32, collision editor by Oggo and, not to forget rracunis and petrus for their contributions. We also had an update to CSM by Zaz and a developing tool in Wad Controller by Duffer, as well as a yet unexplored area of pitcrew model editing by Oggo. 

I'm just grateful to work with such talent and contribute towards one of the best mods in years for this 20 year old game. 

So to all who have contributed to GP4 in this past year, THANK YOU!

And finally, thank you for downloading and playing, enjoying GP4 and keeping it alive. 

GP4: 1994 McLaren MP4/9 Peugeot - Australian GP Version released

 

I proudly present to you my 1994 McLaren MP4/9. If you've been around this blog for a while, you'll know this is one of the first cars I blogged about. I talk about the car shape and features in my MP4/9 Walkaround back in January 2019. I also did a summary of the season as part of the Model review & season overview. It was my second carshape since my return to GP4, but this is the fourth 1994 car to be completed. I was inspired by my visit to the Donington museum just before it was closed where I was able to get a good number of detail photographs that helped me massively make this car as accurate as I could, whilst taking care of the polygon count. 

As the car was mapped and sitting around on my hard drive for a while I decided to release the car ready to paint. As no one else had the time to do it, I picked it up back in the beginning of 2021, but I got caught up producing lots of content that this project once again gathered dust. But now that the 2021 creation draws to an end, I was able to come back to this car and bring it to completion. 

If you look at my 1994 Williams, you'll see I have included a lot of textures for my swatches, but for my 2021 cars, I decided to bring them all into a second texture, and I've done the same for the McLaren. Thankfully the car didn't see many visible updates throughout the season, just different rear wing configurations. Also the livery and logo placements remained largely unchanged, so making track specific versions shouldn't be too difficult. I hope to do that in the near future. 

My plan is to make hay during the F1 off-season to do some more work on 1994 related content. I hope to have something to show you and share with you soon. 

GP4: 2021 Alfa Romeo liveries updated

This is Hega's 2021 Alfa Romeo C41. I helped with the Styrian GP livery earlier in the year, so I'm fairly familiar with the template. With a number of special liveries and a driver change, I thought I would come back and add a few liveries to the pack which has now been released. 

Dutch GP

Raikkonen was forced to miss the race because of isolation, so reserve driver Robert Kubica made a welcome return to the grid. He didn't do too badly at all. He raced at two events, firstly the Dutch GP, where I've updated some of the logos that kept moving around the car, and obviously Kubica's name, flag and the number 88. 

Italian GP

Kubica's second race was at the Italian GP, which coincided with Alfa's celebratory livery which featured more green. I really like how the special logo fits nicely on the nose. Giovinazzi had a great qualifying performance, but it was ruined by a bit of chaos in the second chicane that sent him to the back of the grid with a damaged car. 

Abu Dhabi GP

Sadly, Alfa Romeo are not going to retain either of their drivers. Popular veteran, Kimi Raikkonen will retire having made his debut way back in 2001. Even in his final year, he produced memorable moments on the radio, was in contention for the most overtakes, and had some stunning first laps that shows he's not lost any of his desire or skill. The message on the side of the car harks back to a radio message back in his Lotus days. 

Ferrari junior, Giovinazzi will also depart the grid. The popular Italian proved he was quick, but failed to have the stand out performances that ultimately made him a bit forgetable in the races. His car ran a different message of thanks on the side. 

Both cars ran #PanTorpeda raising awareness and help for this a six-year old Polish kid awaiting surgery. A fan of F1, his endearing picture of a rocket featured on the side of the car. 

I hope you enjoy this little update from Hega and me. 

GP4: 2021 Car Livery updates

Having completed the helmets for 2021, I have turned my attention back to the cars and updated some of the liveries to the end of the season. 

2021 Mercedes-AMG F1 W12 E-Performance

I've updated the car driven by Bottas at the final race, emblazoned with Kiitos logos, the team saying thanks to Valterri for his contributions over the past couple of seasons. His number has returned to a blue outline, and I amended his race suit (not that you can really tell). 

2021 Williams FW43B

Just one livery added to the final full season pack for the Williams team. They were promoting the new King's Man film and those logos have been added to the various places on the car, including the halo. 

2021 Aston Martin AMR21

Two liveries have been added to this pack, in Saudi Arabia they could not run alcoholic advertisements. In Abu Dhabi, they added Juniper Networks logo to the halo which is also included in this pack. 

Thanks for the support throughout the year, 2021 has seen some great breakthroughs and lots of great content released that has in part revitalised the GP4 community and I'm glad to have played a small part to that. We all do this for the love of the sport and the game and to enjoy ourselves and have a good time, so I hope my contributions bring some joy to this ancient game. 

GP4: Final batch of 2021 helmets

A Happy New Year to all of you.

I never envisioned at the beginning of 2021 that I would end up doing as many helmets as I did. I'm grateful that there are other authors who have released fantastic content to supplement it. Having been a mere novice at Photoshop before, I'm growing in confidence in what I can do, and that's in part pushing myself to produce more and more complicated helmets. Some have come off better than others, I must admit, but this final batch are amongst my best work this season, that's the way that it should be I guess. I've added 9 new helmets for you in this batch of releases.

Valterri Bottas

2021 Valterri Bottas Abu Dhabi Helmet

First up, we have Valterri Botta's helmet for his final race at Mercedes. I've actually enjoyed recreating all of his designs this year, all done by his girlfriend. This one features a messages of thanks in different languages, some career highlights, a number of photos from his achievements with the team, as well as a fitting tribute to Niki Lauda on the back, and a nod to teammate Lewis Hamilton. The top is full of stock art, which I was able to track down was by Anastasia Vintovkina. I even had to mix two fonts together to make up the Danke Mercedes text. 

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Charles Leclerc

2021 Charles Leclerc Abu Dhabi GP helmet

This is another busy helmet. I started off by creating a glittery background, and there was just about enough photos for me to recreate the design, with messages of love, the prancing horse of Ferrari and his own name repeated on the top. It was a pleasant enough helmet to make and I think it looks really nice in game. 

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Lando Norris

2021 Lando Norris US GP helmet

Two Lando Norris helmets for you. This one is back from the US GP. It looks simple, but with the moon and rust backgrounds, I struggled at the time at the seams. It's not perfect still, but close enough not to notice it. I'm quite pleased with the final result and to get it done, as this was plaguing me sitting in my to do list for a while. 

2021 Lando Norris Abu Dhabi GP Helmet

I was expecting this helmet, which shines and reflects in different ways and in different colours, to be near impossible. But I found a close match to the pattern that Norris used, and I managed to quite quickly put his design together again, I managed to use some of the techniques I've learned this year to put this together. It looks great in GP4, working well with the alpha channels that adds another element to this helmet. In the end, it didn't take as long as I feared, and I'm pleased with the result. 

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George Russell

2021 George Russell Abu Dhabi GP Helmet

George Russell, in his final race with Williams, had a plain helmet, along with a new visor strip promoting the new King's Man film, where the team members were able to sign messages directly onto it. Because I did a similar task with Norris's British GP helmet earlier this year, I knew just how to go about this one. All the messages are true to the real lid, although there's a few I had to get creative on placement. The blue also twinkles a bit in the lights. Again, not as bad as I feared, again I'm pleased with the result. 

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Mick Schumacher

2021 Mick Schumacher US GP helmet

Two helmets for Mick Schumacher. Like Lando's US helmet, it was hanging over me for the last few races. I attempted to recreate it directly from photos, but there was no good picture of the right side. In the end, after much searching, I found the correct wood stained Texan flag. I also found a close match to the floral embossing. It was just then finding a good match to the rust background, there's three different layers going on there, and I managed to recreate the helmet entirely. From fearing I couldn't do it, I'm really glad I can tick this off, as it was a challenge, but I'm glad it's done and representative of the real thing. 

2021 Mick Schumacher Abu Dhabi GP helmet

Mick went all blue for the final race, with each star representing one member of the Haas staff. The placing of the stars was probably the most complicated thing about this helmet, a fairly easy recreation compared to some of the others in this batch of releases. 
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Max Verstappen

I wanted to commemorate Max's first World Championship by making up his helmet. He's driven absolutely brilliantly all year, and he's made less obvious mistakes to Lewis, and though I felt he was over aggressive at times, it doesn't take away from the achievement of beating a 7-times World Champion in probably the marginally better car, to his first World Championship. 

2021 Max Verstappen US GP Helmet

I had his template for his helmet mocked up from his previous liveries, so it wasn't too much trouble to recolour it to his regular design, and add one a few parts. In the US GP, the team ran with Acura branding instead of Honda, so that's all that's different with this helmet really. 

2021 Max Verstappen Abu Dhabi GP Helmet

Max had a thank you Honda logo put onto the back of his helmet for this weekend. He ran it in practice and qualifying, but ran his regular lid in the race. Anyway, I felt it justified it's own helmet, and as I say it's my tribute to his Championship success. 

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