GP4: 2024 Helmets v1.01 by fongu

From today, you can download my 2024 special helmets in this updated pack. Most of these helmets have been included in the 2024 mod, but a few of you wanted them seperately, so this ones for you.

It was always going to be difficult to keep up with the pace at which I created helmets in the previous years, so I did take a concious decision to cut back for the 2024 season, and devote more time to other projects. However, I have done a batch of them, and I've surprised myself with just how many I ended up creating. I'm sorry if I havent' created your favourite from this season, my criteria was based around how quickly I could get it done, whether the helmet had a good story behind it, or whether it marked a memorable moment in the race. Also some helmets were used for more than one race. 

Albon - Chinese GP
	Inspired by the giant panda that is so important to Chinese culture, Albon has this cute and brilliantly designed helmet by MDM Designs and painted by Mad56.

Bearman - Saudi Arabian GP
	In the first of two stand in performances, Ollie ran a version of one of his 2023 helmet specials. Ollie stood in for an ill Carlos Sainz in the Ferrari and did a great job, scoring points on his debut. Designed by Brandon Seaber, this helmet has an O on one side and a B on the other, his initials of course.

Bearman - Azerbaijan GP
	Bearman's second stand in appearance was in place of Kevin Magnussen in the Haas, who was banned for amassing too many penalty points on his license. His second race in F1, for a second team, produced a second points scoring finish. His Haas helmet has the O on both sides to incorporate the Haas logo on each side.

Colapinto - Standard helmet
	Colapinto replaced Logan Sargeant in the Williams from the Italian GP and has done an impressive job, despite knowing his seat will go to Carlos Sainz next season. His helmet has a great mix of colours and proudly representing his home nation of Argentina.

Colapinto - Mexican GP
	Colapinto ran this tribute to fellow countryman, Carlos Reutemann for the two South American races, a reminder of the simpler, yet more striking helmets of old compared to the various designs of today. Franco's done a great job since replacing Logan Sargeant and has generated some additional sponsors to the Williams team.

Gasly - Emilia Romagna GP
	One of several Senna tribute helmets, Gasly chose to run it at the track that claimed the Brazilian's life 30 years ago. This simple design merges well with his own design, and I love the nod to the Rothmans sponsor that he sported on the Williams back in 1994.

Gasly - Belgian GP
	Alpine ran a promotion for the Deadpool vs Wolvering film at the Belgian GP, and it was a nice touch to have each driver run helmets inspired by the two heroes. Designed by Adrian Paviot, this is clearly the Wolverine helmet along with the trademark claw marks on the side.

Lawson - Standard helmet
	Liam's design is an evolution of his previous helmets, with more Maori inspired art and a new comic style personal logo. Designed, once again, by MDM helmets, Lawson has a chance in the RB to stake his claim on the second Red Bull seat for 2025... or earlier.

Leclerc - Miami GP
	Here's a batch of Charles Leclerc helmets, designed by Adrian Paviot. They're all based around his design for 2024, mostly with changes in colour and slight details. For the Miami GP, both drivers ran blue helmets in recognition of their new partnership with HP and a convenient nod to the historic blue Ferrari that once raced on US soil.

Leclerc - Emilia Romagna GP
	For the Emilia Romagna GP, his helmet is clearly inspired with the red, white and green of the Italian tricolour flag.

Leclerc - Monaco GP
	Leclerc took his first victory of the year at his home race in Monaco. This helmet is unique from his other designs in the year, but I wanted to celebrate Charles finally achieving his child-hood dream with this special helmet design.

Leclerc - Spanish GP
	Charles celebrated having 16 million TikTok followers on Instagram with this gold glitter encrusted number.

Leclerc - Italian GP
	At the Italian GP at Monza, Ferrari wanted to celebrate carbon fibre for some reason. Nevertheless, you know already if it's black and yellow, I'm in.  It's always special when a Ferrari takes the chequered flag at Monza, Leclerc couldn't have won in two better places in the 2024 season than at Monaco and Monza.

Leclerc - Singapore GP
	This helmet was made to look good under the floodlit Singapore track, with a shiny dark red with geometric shapes.

Norris - Monaco GP
	Lando's Quadrant group have taken ownership over his helmet designs for 2024, and this one mixes Senna's helmet with chrome, fused together by his 2024 helmet design. As Piastri also ran a Senna inspired helmet, both in a Senna helmet liveried car, it at least made the two drivers distinguisable.

Ocon - Belgian GP
	As mentioned earlier, Alpine were running their Deadpool movie promo at the Belgian GP and Ocon ran this Deadpool helmet. He ran a similar design in 2023 in Las Vegas, and whilst that had more of a comic, animation style, this one is a bit more live-action super hero inspired. Ocon's helmet are designed by MDM Designs this season.

Perez - British GP

Sergio wanted to mark 20 years of Red Bull in F1 with this classic Red Bull can inspired lid. Once upon a time, all Red Bull drivers had helmets like this, and the first Red Bull test car also looked like this. Vettel ran a similar design when Dietrich Mateschitz passed away. Anyway, I liked this design and couldn't resist giving it a go. At times I wish I hadn't with the chequered design causing me a lot of pain to get right over the seam.

Piastri - Monaco GP
	Oscar's helmets are designed by MDM Designs and merges Senna's helmet design and colours with Oscar's current design. The helmet looks great with the special liveried McLaren and race suits for the Senna tribute weekend in Monaco. How has it been 30 years since that fateful day already.

Ricciardo - Singapore GP

Whilst Daniel has run more striking designs in 2024, this helmet stands out because this was his final helmet before, what is likely to be, his retirement from F1. Sadly his last three seasons have simply not delivered the drives we had grown accustomed to seeing. We have all probably been spared the heartache of what would have likely turned out badly had he replaced Perez at Red Bull. We'll miss the honey badger for sure.

Sainz - Miami GP
	As mentioned earlier, the Miami GP for Ferrari was all about blue, so Dave Designs and Carlos appeared with this patched denim number. When I started, I thought it was similar enough to his 2024 design, but in the end I this helmet had more new parts than anticipated, but I'm happy I persevered with this.

Sainz - Italian GP
	This helmet was to celebrate carbon fibre with the rest of the Ferrari team, not that they pioneered it, nor did they introduced it to F1. Still, the material has been a mainstay in F1 since the 1980's, owing to it's strong yet light properties. I appreciate the simplicity of this design, but having said that it wasn't that straight forward of a design to recreate.

Verstappen - Italian GP

Verstappen wore this shiny orange helmet at three races this season in support of the Dutch Mens National football team at the European Championships. KV Designs has been doing Max's helmets for the last few seasons, with clear inspiration from his father's helmet.  The early races saw Max run a slightly different helmet to the launch version, it's in the pack, but so subtle is the change it's not worth adding it to this post.

I hope you've enjoyed this update post, and running these helmets in your favourite game. 

I'm indebted to Jvinu for his helmet shapes and templates, and these helmets are compatible with ACSPRH version 1 where other games support it. 

Thanks for your on-going support. I'm off to carry on prepping for the next 2024 mod update. Stay tuned. 

GP4: 2024 McLaren MCL38 by fongu

I proudly present to you my version of the 2024 McLaren MCL38 for GP4.  

McLaren MCL38 by fongu for GP4

I know we have a full GP4 grid for 2024 already, and with my time being diverted to various other mods this year, I've not really made much progress on any 2024 car. In the end, I couldn't resist doing this one, taking my time over it, and hopefully delivering a nice alternative to Isaint's version... both of which will be available in my 2024 mod which will be updated shortly. 

The shape is the early season specification and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, and this release comes with five different liveries. 

1. Launch livery - The launch livery left room for the revolving door of sponsors that change from race to race. I've decided to leave it as the launch livery for a generic standard season livery. 
2. Design for Change livery - This livery was created by Miltz as part of the Design for Change campaign that ran at the Japanese GP, featuring the artistic style inspired by Edomoji, the ancient Japanese calligraphy and culture. 
3. Senna livery - as you know, I'm a sucker for Senna tributes, and with it being 30 years from his passing, McLaren ran his helmet colours on the car at Monaco. Both drivers ran Senna tribute helmets, and this car features their one-off race suits too. 
4. Legends livery - This livery was inspired by the MP4 era of cars i.e. the early years of Ron Dennis and Marlboro sponsorship. With a similar livery ran by the Indycar team on Rossi's car this season, it wasn't a surprise they would run it on the F1 car at some point, and it arrived under the floodlights in Singapore. 
5. Chrome livery - McLaren ran a similar chrome livery in 2023 at the British GP, but for 2024 it was run at the US GP in Austin. In one sense, this harkens back to the chrome era of McLaren liveries, but in reality it only highlights Google as their sponsor. Either way, the reflective car looks fantastic in a sea of carbon cars with matte paint. 

McLaren's orange paint this year shows up quite differently in different lights in real life, with it looking quite red in Jeddah, to looking much lighter in bright day light. It's not the easiest to replicate in GP4, but hopefully you like it. 

Well enough of my ramblings, here's the download link to the car. Enjoy. 

GP4: ICYMI October 2024

It's been a little while since I last updated you with news from the GP4 community, but we've had some ground-breaking releases that will shape the way in which GP4 will be modded and updates shared in the future. 

Once again, legends from the GP4 modding community have cooked up an amazing new tool that opens up a new world of possibilities to modding GP4. We also have a host of other exciting new updates below.

Part of the problem beforehand was that a lot of patches were editing the code in GP4.exe itself, which was limited. GPxPatch and GP4 Tweaker opened up new ways of changing GP4 by use of external DLL's. This tool, which is compatible with both GPxPatch and GP4 Tweaker, uses that same philosphy and started creating a big library of existing and new tweaks to be added to the game without having to touch the GP4.exe file. There's great compatibility with previous tools and, for the creative, opens up the possibility of previously thought impossible (see below).  This is a real game changer, and has been developed over many months, bringing together some of the brightest minds in GP4 modding all together in this new tool. It will take time to learn how to make the most of this new tool, but it will be well worth your time and energy.
by carl_gpgames, Zaz and Öggo | Release info |  Documentation | Database

Öggo's Dev Corner
In conjunction with the release of GP4 Memory Access, we have some amazing new possibilities now possible by Öggo.  High resolution pitcrew models - previously it was limited to only 400 vertices, but now it is no longer limited. With pitcrew models able to be edited in Blender, this is a significant addition.  Individual Meshes & Textures DLL - This DLL expands original Grand Prix 4 to allow full control of how meshes (front/rear wheels, helmets, cockpits, cars) and textures (cockpits, helmets) are loaded, supporting per-driver, per-team, and per-track custom loading. It includes features to manage LODs (Level of Detail), auto-naming conventions, and fallbacks to default GP4 assets when custom assets are unavailable. This DLL enables, for the first time ever, the possibility of having individual cockpits, as this was not possible in native GP4.
by Öggo

2001 Melbourne Track
Hega is doing an amazing job with the 2001 tracks, utilising the AI upscaled tracks by carl_gpgames and his own high resolution textures and objects. We now have this beautiful Australian track added, with 11 out of the 17 tracks now updated.
by Hega | Info

SkaningeN's 2010 cars add-on
SkaningeN is back with his track specific car updates, to go with his previous releases of tyres & rims and helmet packs. The cars are originally by Soulbringer and also CM and Josekast respectively. This is a massive work and worth your time to check out all the versions with a season run through.
Updates by SkaningeN | Cars add-on

1997 Track Pack Hi-res Update
After the successful release of the 1996 track pack, we have an update to Plodekk and Cleberpister's 1997 track pack, with new pit garages, pit stands and other updates, as well as new performance files and physics.
by Naitch7 | Info

Monza Track Update 2019-2024
Thanks to Gap177 for sharing his track updates to the Monza track based on the original work by first TTM and laterly Hega. We have the last six versions of the track now available, incredible work.
by Gap177, Hega, TTM | Info

Hockenheim Track Update 2019
It's a shame that Hockenheim no longer has a place on the F1 calendar, but thanks to Gap177 for updating this version of the track based on Hega's previous work.
by Gap177, Hega | Info

Paris Track
Take a tour around the sites of Paris on this street track made by Viking75.
Viking75 | Info

Junin (Autódromo Eusebio Marcilla), Argentina
The first of two Argentinian tracks released by Viking75, we have this short and fast track in Junin.
by Viking75 | Info

Parque La Pedrera, Argentina
This is a beta release of the track based on the Parque La Pedrera in Argentina.
by Viking75 | Info