1996 Model Review

The 1996 Season was the year that Damon Hill finally triumphed. Williams dominated with their FW18 and it was Hill's team-mate Jacques Villeneuve, in his debut season, who took the title battle down to the wire.

It was Schumacher's first season at Ferrari, a season that produced 3 wins. The Monaco Grand Prix saw only 4 finishers, with Olivier Panis taking his only victory in F1, and Ligier's last before bowing out of the sport at the end of the season. Forti didn't even get that far, running out of money mid-season.

Another highlight was when Jacques Villeneuve produced an incredible overtake on Michael Schumacher at the Portuguese Grand Prix, driving around the outside of him in the long final right hander on his way to victory.

1996 was also the first year when all teams ran V10 engines, as mandated by the rules. This meant that Ford stopped producing V8s and Ferrari stopped making their V12 engines.

Although I had added models to my collection whilst growing up, it was when I was creating 1996 cars for GP4 that led me to purchase at least one version of all the cars from 1996 in models, only the Onyx and Minichamps cars. They were very cheap to buy second hand and provided an additional reference for my 3D models. So it was my first pursuit in model collecting which began expanding exponentially after collecting this season's cars.


1996 Drivers World Champion: Damon Hill

1996 Constructors' World Champions: Williams

Team	Chassis	Onyx	Minichamps	Spark	BBR	Tameo	Ixo	Others
Benetton Renault	B196		*		*	*
Ferrari	F310		*		*	*	*
	F310/2		*		*	*
Footwork Hart	FA17	*			*
Forti Ford	FG01
	FG03	*
Jordan Peugeot	196		*		*	*	*
Ligier Mugen-Honda	JS43		*		*	*	*
McLaren Mercedes	MP4/11		*		*	*
Minardi Ford	M195B	*				*
Sauber Ford	C15		*		*	*
Tyrrell Yamaha	024	*	*		*	*
Williams Renault	FW18	*	*		*	*		*

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Williams FW18	Ferrari F310
Benetton B196	McLaren MP4/11
Ligier JS43
Jordan 196	Minardi M195B
Tyrrell 024	Footwork FA17

Forti