GP4: 2022 Helmets pack updated

Only a couple of small updates, but I thought I'd share them with you whilst I continue to work on others in the background.

Pierre Gasly - Alpha Tauri

Pierre Gasly 2022 Bahrain GP helmet

Pierre Gasly ran a bold Ukrainian flag to show solidarity for the country in the middle of being invaded. He only ran this in Bahrain. 

I did spot a small issue on the alpha channel of the standard helmet, so I've fixed that in this pack. 

Pierre has updated his helmet in the Saudi Arabian GP, but that will have to wait until the next batch. 

Charles Leclerc - Ferrari

Charles Leclerc 2022 Bahrain GP Helmet

Both Ferrari drivers are running Bell helmets with the solid wing on the rear of the helmet from the Bahrain GP onwards. Leclerc's design has been updated to include a maroon gradient at the bottom of the helmet. The wing on the back is slightly larger and higher up on this year's helmet, so I've done my best to adapt the livery to the the shapes I had available by Jvinu. 

Carlos Sainz Jr - Ferrari

Carlos Sainz 2022 Bahrain GP Helmet

Carlos Sainz has switched from Schuberth to Bell, after trialling both in the preseason. The Bell helmet, as well as having a wing, also has a different rear livery so that's been updated. I've also made a few subtle improvements. 

Lewis Hamilton - Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton 2022 Bahrain GP Helmet

Lewis showed off his new helmet at the Bahrain GP, going for yellow and purple with a hint of carbon texture in the background. There are a number of changes to the contours, so it wasn't quite as easy an update as I was hoping for. On the shape side, he's moved to a transparent wing, having ran a solid one in 2021 and in preseason. 

Nico Hulkenberg - Aston Martin

Nico Hulkenberg 2022 Bahrain GP Helmet

I found some more photos following the first race, so I've updated the logos on the side, added the Ukrainian flag on the top and amended some of the green gradients on the front of the helmet. This was quite a quick update, so there's no big preview of this one. 

Daniel Ricciardo

Daniel Ricciardo 2022 helmet

Daniel Ricciardo continues his partnership with Ornamental Conifer to be extra creative and unique in his helmet designs. Originally in peach, the base colour turned Orange, matching the new McLaren livery very nicely. The rips on the side were not too difficult to create, neither was the top, but the 'Present Momentum' text on the top was the most difficult to line up, spanning the top, the side and the wing elements of the helmet. 

Download Link | (mirror)

I hope you enjoy this small update, I hope to share some more helmets amongst other works soon. 

GP4: 2022 Helmets - 18 helmets completed

I hope you're excited for the first race of the 2022 season. 

I've got seven more helmets completed and I'm happy to share them with you. 

Haas

Mick Schumacher

2022 Mick Schumacher helmet

Here is Mick Schumacher's standard launch helmet. He did experiment with an alternative sparkly version in testing, and it looks like he'll use the updated design for the first few races. He's back to yellow and green, displayed prominently at the front and the top, but he's gone black and blue at the rear, something he did at the Abu Dhabi GP at the end of last year. 

Kevin Magnussen

2022 Kevin Magnussen helmet

After taking part in the pre-season test at short notice, it wasn't much of a surprise that he wore his 2020 lid. I wasn't sure whether he'd have time to get a new one for the season, evidently not. I was able to use Jvinu's excellent 2020 helmet as a guide to create my own. There's not many pictures of it yet, so this may get updated as more photos appear. 

Mercedes

George Russell

2022 George Russell helmet

George Russell decided against a predominantly red helmet, he says that look belongs to Michael Schumacher. He's adopted more black with flashes of red and blue. The helmet follows a similar design to his previous helmet. I was worried how easily distinguishable this would be from Hamilton's helmet on TV, but then Lewis now has a bright yellow helmet. What you can't see on the previews is that there are metallic/glittery reflective parts of his helmet, so it's not all plain black, but it will show up more prominently in game. 

Red Bull

Sergio 'Checo' Perez

2022 Sergio Perez helmet

Sergio Perez is also running a similar design from last year, full of bright colours. There's more aztec inspired patterns subtly placed around the helmet, and the Mexican flag on top. He did have yellow parts, at the launch, at the front of his helmet, but in testing they turned blue on one side, and red on the other. Where the sponsors are on top of Red Bull logo on the side, I usually try and avoid making sponsors go over the seam on the texture to save time, but I've decided to take the plunge this year and try and spend a bit more time trying to line it all up seamlessly. 

Alpine

Esteban Ocon

2022 Esteban Ocon helmet

Ocon's helmet is quite a simple design, but it's got a subtle honeycomb pattern on the side and top, and the deeper red is also reflective and glittery. In testing, the French flag had reflective Alpine logos, but I've stuck with his launch helmet for now. A nice, bold, striking helmet for the Frenchman. 

Fernando Alonso

2022 Fernando Alonso helmet

With Alpine running a special pink livery for the first few races, Alonso has a special helmet to go with it. Personally I'm hoping he'll return to his familiar colours soon. 

Aston Martin

Nico Hulkenberg

2022 Nico Hulkenberg helmet

Super sub, Nico Hulkenberg at least had time to pick up his helmet rather than scrounging around for a spare plain helmet as he did in 2020. This was his 2021 reserve helmet where some logos had to be taped over and new sponsors put in their place. Again, there's not a huge amount of photos of it around yet, so there may be an updated version in the future. Again I have to thank Jvinu for his 2020 version that helped me a lot in lining things up. 

Download Link | (mirror)

The remaining 3 helmets are a bit more complex and will take time to complete. On top of that, the Ferrari drivers have appeared with painted wings (they ran transparent ones in testing), and it looks like Leclerc's got subtle maroon added to his helmet. Hamilton and Gasly have run bold new colours on their helmets, whilst Albon wore the blue helmet in FP1 and his white helmet in FP2. Anyway, I won't have any time to mod for the next week or two, so the next update may be some time away. I'll return soon to complete the set. 

GP4: 2nd batch of 2022 helmets

In this update, I have made a few shape fixes, and I've updated Lance Stroll's helmet to make the number on the top chrome. Today I offer up 5 more helmets added to the pack. I wanted to hold back a bit on creating the helmets until I was sure of what they will actually use during the season. 

But there's no harm in having the templates done that will hopefully save me time in the long run. Alex Albon, Sebastian Vettel and Mick Schumacher have all brought significantly different helmets to testing in Bahrain, Kevin Magnussen used his 2020 helmet, whilst many drivers ran the 'no war' logos on their lids. I wanted to create a base pack first, and if they continue to have special messages at the race, I'll add them then. 

Red Bull

Max Verstappen

Max Verstappen 2022 helmet

World Champion Max Verstappen has gone all gold for 2022. Unfortunately the wing at the back of the Schuberth hasn't been created, and the Arai one doesn't fit, so I'll have to put that on the back burner for now. The number 1 does appear on the back of the helmet along with a World Championship star. 

Ferrari

Carlos Sainz Jr

Carlos Sainz Jnr 2022 helmet

Carlos Sainz retains the style of his previous helmet, done by Dave Designs, but I've had to redraw every part of it for the 2022 edition. I love the bright red, the the red dashes, a good mix of Ferrari and his Spanish heritage. Sainz has moved from Schuberth to using Bell helmets this year. 

Williams

Nicholas Latifi

Nicholas Latifi 2022 helmet

Latifi has had a very similar helmet since his F1 debut, with personal sponsor, Sofina, logos making up all the swirls. This year, the blue ones are slightly brighter, and there's subtle changes all around the helmet. From the pictures I've seen, he's retained the Frank Williams Racing logo on the side of his helmet, I'm not sure if this will stay, but it would be a nice touch if it did. 

Alex Albon 2022 helmet

New Williams driver, Alex Albon, is still a Red Bull driver, can you tell? A striking design, with the Thai flag being worked in. After the rollercoster experience of F1 with Toro Rosso and Red Bull, he'll be looking to establish himself as the new young charger at Williams, pushing the team to good results just as Russell did the previous year. He's already got an alternative design that features much more white, so let's wait and see what he'll use during the season. 

Lewis Hamilton 2022 helmet

Finally in this batch is Lewis Hamilton returning with essentially his 2021 helmet design. The most significant change is on the top of the helmet with the rainbow glitter  most prominent on the 44, but also more subtly in his logo. I've also done a bit of fine tuning to make it more accurate to the real helmet. 

I doubt I'll get all the helmets done in time for the first race, that's not my aim, but I'll be glad for better pictures of the helmets in the race build up. Alonso has already teased more pink on his helmet to go with his predominantly pink car, I guess Ocon is likely to have the same. 

Download Link | (mirror)

GP4: First batch of 2022 Helmets

As testing proper begins for the upcoming 2022 season, so I'm starting to put together some helmets for the 2022 season for GP4. 

I'm grateful as ever for Jvinu's helmet shapes and templates, I couldn't do these without them. I'm also grateful for Oggo's tweak that allows drivers to have their own independent shapes. 

For 2021, I was happy to paint helmets that fit the four helmet brands, Bell, Arai, Schuberth and Stilo, however drivers have different appendages, so for 2022, I'm going to be releasing helmets along with Jvinu's shapes. I've also deleted the visor appendage that hasn't been present for a few years now. This should enable greater compatibility with ACSPRH helmets in other games such as Asseto Corsa. 

I wasn't intending to release as many helmets as I did last year, so there were lots of downloads. This year, I'm going to have one download with all the base helmets included, and just update it as I create helmets. 

Right here we go

Aston Martin

Sebastian Vettel

2022 Sebastian Vettel helmet

Jens Munser Designs and Vettel were quick off the mark to create this special lid in support of Ukranians under attack from the Russian army for testing in Bahrain. The helmet features the GPDA no war slogan, the no war logo, and the dove, a symbol of peace. The top of the helmet has the lyrics to the John Lennon Beatles song, Imagine. The rubber strip at the bottom also features various flags from around the world, a really nice touch. 

2022 Lance Stroll helmet

Lance Stroll and Mark Antar created a classic helmet design for the first Aston Martin F1 car, and they've developed that with the lime green highlights on an amended winged design. As usual, the screenshot does not do the reflections justice, with the wings in matte, contrasting with the a fairly reflective green livery. The Maple Leaf is now much closer to the front, and is fully chrome. 

Alpha Tauri

Pierre Gasly

2022 Pierre Gasly helmet

Pierre Gasly continues with an interation of his usual design, now with a straight French flag along the top and back, whilst running a brighter red colour. Again the PG logos and the number 10 are super reflective, and makes it stand out a bit from Yuki's design. The team have inverted the colours on the visor strip for the Bahrain test, which is updated on the download, but not the screenshot. 

2022 Yuki Tsunoda helmet

Yuki Tsunoda ended 2021 with an amended helmet design and the contours of that are carried through to his 2022 helmet. As usual, the grafitti has changed, along with the colour which is now much more orange, and Adrien Paviot's blueprints differs from the actual painted grafitti. 

Ferrari

Charles Leclerc

2022 Charles Leclerc helmet

Whilst Vettel's helmet does garner much sympathy and solidarity, Leclerc's new red helmet is my favourite design so far. Bold, simple, striking, and goes great with the 1980-90s like scarlet Ferrari livery. The prancing horse logo at the front looks awesome as well. 

McLaren

Lando Norris

2022 Lando Norris helmet

Lando Norris and MDM designs have continued with a slightly amended helmet for the 2022 season, with the slight orange shadows with geometric shapes similar to the ones he ran in the early part of 2021. The number 4 on the top of his helmet is also slightly altered, but I suspect he'll be running a fair few special designs as the season progresses, as he has done in previous seasons. 

Download Link | (mirror)

Time Trial League - 2022 Pre-season Test Report @Fiorano

Welcome to Fiorano in sunny Italy, host of the pre-season test for the 2022 Time Trial League. 

We're using the 2015 release of Fiorano for GP4, beautifully created by the F1Virtual team. 

We have seven participants at this test session, with nine in total having signed up for the season so far. Newcomers, JCaranti and Hinyaldee joined the action alongside returnees, Gildoorf, Prblanco, 32bobo32, Carl_Gpgames and me, Fongu. Check out the link to the league on the menu bar at the top for more entrants. 

The Fiorano track is a tricky little track. You start off with the longest straight on the course, and you break heavily into turn 1, but it opens up on the exit allowing you to pick up speed for the fast S bends, not quite flat out so quite challenging. Then you are back on the brakes in a turn for the tight turn 4, which leads you up hill, over the start/finish straight in this figure of 8 configuration. There's lots of room on the exit kerb. Turn 5 is another tight right hander, that leads you downhill into the tightest hairpin, it's difficult to get the car slowed down. Flat out, with a slight feather in turn 7 before a long sweeping turn 8 that leads you back to the finish line. A fairly short lap, but lots of different kinds of corners, as you'd expect from a dedicated test track. 

Rule Changes

New season means a tweak to the rules. Instead of finishing a lap with 1 lap of fuel remaining this was switched to starting the lap with at least 2 laps of fuel onboard. This sounds a minor change, but it caught out 32bobo32 who started his fastest lap with 1.9 laps of fuel. Thankfully it didn't affect his position, and this is only testing after all. 

There's also a change in the track limit rules this year, with the white lines all around the track defining the boundaries, as it should. Last season the boundaries included kerbs, so this will be quite a shift (certainly in my approach on the wheel). The main test in Fiorano for this is on the exit of turn 7, where there's plenty of kerb to run wide on, but now you have to keep at least one wheel on the white line. 

Setups

For the first time, we have access to everyone's set up data, thanks for Prblanco for compiling and sharing the data. These are the setups used on the fastest, submitted laps. 

We can see there's a fairly equal spread of inputs, with the four 'switched' drivers using the keyboard, whilst the analog drivers are all on wheels. 32bobo32 did do a few laps on the wheel, but still needs more practice as he couldn't match his pace on the keyboard. 

FW/RW are the wing levels, the majority of us running more front wing than rear, with Hinyaldee being the only exception. Gildoorf is running the lowest downforce settings, whilst I'm running the most wing, as I explained above. 

RB/FB are the brake balance settings, are you can see how much further rearward Gildoorf and my setups are. Carl_gpgames is running brakes extremely near the front. 

1G-7G are the gear ratios. Everyone is running seven gears, and the seventh gear ratio is really based on how much rear wing you're running. For me, I went for quite small differences in the lower gear ratio range, as I say, I felt this helped me out of the slower corners (whether it actually transpires that way or not I'm not sure!). 

The top speed is at the end of the start/finish straight, with Gildoorf having a good advantage on that front, with Carl_gpgames and myself some 7 kph slower. 

Fongu's notebook

For me personally, being pre-season, I was looking to shake off the cobwebs and just enjoy driving again. I was on the a keyboard, thinking a mid-downforce setup with a good balance would be a good mix between the high speed corners and the low speed ones. I also tried a very rear-ward brake balance as Gildoorf used to good effect last season to help with those pesky slower corners. I was happy to set a lap under 1 minute with that set up, as I found the limits of the car, learned good lines, good braking points, trying different techniques at different corners. I also experimented a bit with my gear ratios, helping me accelerate quickly out of the slow bends, and that gained me a few tenths. As I discovered last season, I can't simply translate my setup on the keyboard straight to a wheel, so I was interested to see Jcaranti trying out my setup on his early runs. I then went pretty much full downforce, I wanted extra braking and grip in the tight corners, and more speed through the higher speed ones. For me, this gave me much more confidence around the corners and I found around half a second. Overall I was happy to concentrate a bit of time on setup work and understanding how that affects my driving, and ultimately pace on track. 

Results

There was an air of excitement at Fiorano, looking to see if there was any change in the pecking order, trying to catch a glimpse of the new cars and new helmets. But as always with testing, there are those struggling to get run time, whilst others were pounding around fine tuning their cars. It's difficult to know whether the times are truely representative of the competitive order or not, or whether some teams were sandbagging. We'll only truly know when we get to the first competitive round. 

Purple times are fastest of anyone. 

Green times are personal best times. 

For those who uploaded more than one lap, the yellow times means that there was a faster sector time in one of the other laps that were slower overall. 

Quickest in all sectors is Jcaranti, who sets a blistering pace on a wheel, over half a second from the rest of the field. This is surely a warning shot to the rest of the field for the start of the season proper. Congratulations to Jcaranti.

I'm pleased to get a time in the 58's on the keyboard - I wanted to use the test session to understand set up a bit more, and maximising it for my driving style. 

Gildoorf sets the third fastest time, struggling a bit with the final sector. Prblanco, on the wheel, is just slightly behind his fellow compatriot, with only the top four able to set a sub 1 minute lap time. 

32bobo32 was also in the 59.7s with his disqualified lap, but he'll be pleased with with his 1:00.00 lap time. 

Hinyaldee ran with no driver aids on the keyboard (you can't turn off steering aid on the keyboard easily (though it is possible in GP4Tweaker)), a brave decision but a lot of his time was spent controlling the car. Spectacular indeed, but unfortunately not particularly quick. 

Carl_gpgames was able to set a time on the wheel, but with a lack of on track running time is confined to the back of the field. 

Reactions

Prblanco: "Congratulations @JCaranti for the win and the three best sector times!"

Jorge: "Massive admiration to @Fongu understanding his control of driving. Many of the tracks i havent raced nor tested in years and others are brand new to me like Saudi Arabia. Thank you very much for everything."

Fongu: "Congrats @Jcaranti on your impressive preseason pace. I look forward to future duels ad the season commences." 

Hinyaldee: "I need to up my game!"

Prblanco was able to offer some helpful advice to Hinyaldee's interesting driving technique...

Prblanco: "Two things seemed very unusual to me about your laps, first is that you drive without F7 Traction Control with a non-analog control scheme, which seems very difficult to control; second is that you use more rear wing than front wing, which induces understeer. Maybe try playing around with these?"

It's good to see the banter remains strong going into the new season... 

32bobo32: "Why am i fast in S3 😂😂😂?"

Fongu: "New season, new rules, new @32bobo32 habits 🤣!"

Gildoorf: "Amazing S3 @32bobo32, wish I could be that fast, I simply had no idea how to draw the best line at last turn. Rear brake bias make the car bounce so agressively to the left"

We hope Duffer will return, we haven't seen him since the middle of 2021

Duffer: "For me the motor isn't in the car yet 😀"

Personally I was just happy to get a clean lap in, but watching the replay back, it just seems like a leisurely Sunday drive, not really braving the limits, just smooth and serene. It certainly didnt' feel like when I was setting the time, as 32bobo32 shares the same sentiment:

32bobo32: "Very smooth drive! All replays give me a smooth drive feeling, It seems so easy to reach the time... When in cockpit the feeling is the opposite 😂"

Testing Photography

With no official TV available during the test, some car liveries remain a mystery. However there was some leaked images from the test that I can present to you.

Carl_gpgames running a message of support for Ukrainians

Fongu in his new car on his way to the second fastest time

This is reported in Autosprint magazine as a possible picture taken inside PinnaGP factory 🤔

We look forward to the new season starting up in a few weeks time. It's certainly whetted the appetite of some of the competitors. There's still time to sign up if you're interested, full details are available on the GrandPrixGames forum thread: https://www.grandprixgames.org

F1Virtual & Friends Time Trial League 2021 End of Season Awards

As we look forward to a new season of the Time Trial League, I wanted to reflect on the 2021 season. 

In case you missed it, here's a reminder of all the rounds of the 2021 season. fongugp4.blogspot.com

I polled the participants, 

Best track of the year

32bobo32: Sochi... pure delight for eyes!

Gildoorf: Zandvoort. I used to hate this circuit until @Paulo Blanco releases his fabulous version.

Kerley: The best circuit to enjoy racing was Interlagos (my home circuit). But I have two mentions: First Sochi. Great work of the F1 Virtual team! Best non-original GP4 circuit to drive, without a doubt. Second was Portimão. I know it's in the distant beginning of 2021, but I believe it was on this circuit that I learned the most from the tips and encouragement of other drivers and I felt like part of a real race grid.

Prblanco: Silverstone, even without graphics it was the most enjoyable track for me to drive on, the layout is just pure goodness

Fongu: Portimao, a fantastically reproduced track and great fun to drive, lots of different line available on keyboard an wheels, I really enjoyed that round. 

The winner is, based on most mentions is: 

Sochi (by F1virtual)

There are many splendid tracks available for GP4, but the latest from F1Virtual raises the standard once again for track building, a deserved winner. 

2022 Blog Update

It seems like an annual event now, for me to tidy up my blog, but I've updated large parts of the blog so that it's hopefully easier to navigate. I've updated pages ready for lots of 2022 content for GP4 and the Time Trial League, and I've fixed a lot of the broken links to model photos, though I still have some way to go.

There's a much smaller menu bar now: 

• Model Reviews: one link to all things about models including sub-pages
• GP4 Downloads: one link to all my GP4 downloads and sub-pages
• GP4 2022 Download Sources: a new page with links for all 2022 content for GP4 that I know of
• Time Trial League 2022: a new page for a new season
• ebay shop: I've not got anything listed there, but I may sell a few models at some stage. 
• donate: If you want to leave a small donation, here's a link to do that.