GP4: 1994 Lotus 109 Mugen-Honda - Australian GP Version released

1994 Lotus 109 Mugen-Honda (Australian GP) by Fongu

I proudly present to you the 1994 Lotus 109 Mugen-Honda for GP4. The shape had been completed for some years now, and has been stop/start in progress sine then. You can read more about the journey and its features in my blog.

Work in Progress post 1

Work in Progress post 2

The team put all their hopes on this car, that along with Mugen-Honda’s special new engine. The new car, well one of them, only made its debut in Spain, and then the engine, again only one of them, appeared in Italy, only making it to the first corner. The combination looked competitive in Monza, but sadly it was too little too late, as Irvine pitched Herbert into a spin and the resulting melee caused a race restart. The team ran out of money, and Herbert was drafted to Ligier then Benetton. The team saw off the season with pay drivers and went into administration, and the Lotus name left the sport.

To read more about how the team faired that season, you can read more here: 1994 season summary & model review

This is the Australian GP version of the car, with Mika Salo and Alex Zanardi at the wheel. 

I have to thank Oggo for sharing his textures of the early season 107C, some of the logos and race numbers were brought over to this car. 

GP4: 1994 Lotus 109 WIP update 2

The shaping of the 1994 Lotus has been finished for quite a few months now, but I hadn't yet posted any pictures of it. Here it is in GP4, under the lights in Singapore. 

The car hasn't yet been mapped, just putting finishing touches on my other cars before I turn my attention back on this one. I wanted to make sure I got lots of practice on Photoshop before attempting the livery on this one. 

The rear end on this car is the most detailed I have done yet, I've made it super shiny below so that you can see the detail on it. 

It's been nice to hear in recent weeks that Alex Zanardi has been able to communicate with his family, although it sounds like a long road to any kind of recovery, sadly, but once more this car is entirely dedicated to this true hero who has battled through so much and is still fighting. 

I can't wait to get back to working on this car, I'll post updates when there is more news.

GP4: 1994 Ligier JS39B all the versions (preview)

Firstly a Happy New Year to you.

Since the release of my 1994 Ligier JS39B based on the Australian GP, I went back to the car to create the various little changes starting the Spanish GP, the fifth round of the 1994 season. The reason I started there is because the existing GP4 1994 mod has all the versions of each car up for the first four rounds. 

At the Spanish GP, rushed rule changes were brought to force to slow the speed of the cars down. This was the first Grand Prix where there was a speed limit and the mechanics had to remain in their pit-garages unless their car was due in for a pitstop. This was in response to Michele Alboreto's Minardi having one of his wheels come off after their pitstop, striking some mechanics, including Nigel Stepney of Ferrari, the Minardi car striking some mechanics on its way to a stand still. Watching footage of cars going full speed out of the pitlane looks so wrong nowadays. 

Anyway, to the car, and the obvious changes for Spain was that the front wing end-plates no longer extend behind the front wheel, and the diffusers were all cut down in size. Actually the teams arrived in protest, with various accidents occurring in testing due to the swift changes to these highly intricate aerodynamic machines. Basically it wasn't safe to rush these safety-induced regulation changes, which could create more crashes and injuries rather than less. It didn't help that Andrew Montermini had a huge shunt in practice, with his feet visible when the car settled down. 

Spanish GP

The cars continued with the new rules, basically because the poorer teams (i.e. almost all the teams on the grid bar the top four) had already cut up their old diffusers to suit the new rules and had no option to run them to the old rules. History lesson over, and here's the Ligier as it appeared in the Spanish GP. I have to admit, the mid-season diffuser that Ligier ran, I couldn't find any reasonable photos of it to be able to make it and the only source I had was from a 1/43 scale model, so it's running the diffuser as from the late end of the season. 

Canadian GP

More new rules at the Canadian GP, the main visible one being the hole in the airbox. Different teams interpreted this differently, with Ligier and Tyrrell perhaps being the most extreme and making their cars look like they were from the 1980s with just a rollover hoop. This version only lasted one race. 

The other minor change was the fuel cap is on the left hand side of the car. 

French GP

Back to Europe, the middle of the European summer, and it's the first non-tobacco livery of the year. Most the weekend, the team ran with all white sidepods, but decided on advertising their own team name in the Grand Prix itself. 

The engine cover received some work, with the holes now being at the rear of the engine cover, although the screenshot doesn't show it, it was one long thing hole along the back end of the airbox. Also a new rear wing assembly, a mid-downforce configuration compared to the previous two races. 

Being a French team, at a French track, Panis ran an onboard camera. 

British GP

A week later, the cars ran in the same specification for the British Grand Prix, albeit with amended non-tobacco livery and the fuel cap returning to the right hand side of the car. 

German GP

The German Grand Prix brought more rule changes. The car is higher, with a plank underneath - if you ran my GP4 cars side-by-side, you'll see that is the case with my cars. The car would feature much larger front wing endplates, this being the specification they will run for the rest of the season. 

As the Hockenheimring is a low-downforce track, I removed the gurney flaps from the front wing. The rear wing is also visibly much smaller, running just 2 elements on the upper section rather than the usual 3. 

The Ligier also had a completely new engine cover. The smooth bump around the Renault logo is now much more shrink-wrapped, with two smaller bumps rather than one big one. The hole at the rear is  now separated into two sections. 

Up to this race, the Ligiers were hopelessly slow, the only two things going for it was the Renault engine, the same as front-runners Williams were using, and the car had bulletproof reliability. Those were the perfect combination for the German Grand Prix, as many runners retired, Panis and Bernard earned themselves podium finishes. 

Hungarian GP

Onto Hungary, a high downforce, narrow twisty track, so on goes a big fat rear wing. The rear wings with an additional element that hung out at the front of the rear wing, common features on almost every car at the beginning of the year, were now banned. The rear wing on this Ligier looks like a barn door, there's so much of it! 

Perhaps after the success in Germany, the cars featured onboard cameras. The other change was the rear brake ducts, no longer are they the periscope ones, the new ones are much more neatly tucked away. Panis would earn another point at this race.

Ligier had actually agreed to sell the team, with Benetton's team principal Flavio Briatore and Tom Walkinshaw investing in the team at the beginning of the year. Flavio, over the course of the season, essentially handed the running of the team to Tom and his TWR team, eventually selling his stake over to TWR. With that arrangement, Frank Dernie, working at Benetton at the time, started working on the Ligier, so some of the solutions to the Benetton were mirrored by the Ligier team. The front wing end plates, the twin holes at the rear of the airbox and the triple rear wing with curvy lower elements all found their way onto the both cars. The cars would look near identical in 1995. 

The same car ran at Belgium, so nothing new to show here. It's interesting with the butchering of Eau Rouge, the team opted to stick with their ultra-high downforce configuration. 

Italian GP

Onto Monza, and another low downforce track. The team introduced their version of a three element rear wing, creating much less drag. Not much else to report in terms of changes and there was no repeat success for the real thing either. 

Portuguese GP

The rest of the season would see the car run in pretty much the same configuration, with the new high downforce version of the rear wing as mentioned earlier. Williams had pioneered the anhedral (triangular shaped) lower rear wing at the beginning of the year, allowing the ends of the wing to interact with the diffuser and also reducing drag. In turn, you do lose a bit of overall downforce, but I think they look pretty. Running with the additional middle element on the rear wing did allow them to run much less angle on the upper main plane. 

European GP

Race 14 was originally intended to be in Argentina, but the Buenos Aires track was not complete in time and the race was given to Jerez, the second Spanish race at the popular test track, dubbed the European GP. 

The team switched out Eric Bernard for Johnny Herbert, the Englishman becoming ever more frustrated at the Lotus team. But a good showing at Monza reminded us just what a good job he's been doing in a terrible car, and he was rewarded with a promotion to Ligier. Bernard would contest just one race for Lotus before being dropped for pay drivers. 

Herbert would beat his team-mate, the reigning F3000 champion of 1993, finishing just ahead of Panis in the race. Impressing the management with this performance, he was recalled to Benetton for a test and then a race seat for the remainder of the season. 

Japanese GP

With two races to go, test driver Franck Lagorce (because Eric Bernard hardly shone in his performances to recall him back I guess) was given the race seat. Panis ended the year with a fifth placed finish. Panis would end up 9th in the Drivers Standings, and the team finished 6th.

In case you missed it, v1 of the Australian GP car is available on this 

GP4: 1994 Ligier JS39B Australian GP Version download

Though the carshape was created back in October 2019, I finally got around to mapping and painting this car. Watch out for more versions of this car coming soon, but for now, enjoy the Australian GP version. 

 

GP4: 1994 Lotus 109 WIP update 1

Hi again. It's been about a month since I last worked on my Haas which has just been released. In that time I've mapped my 1993 Tyrrell 021, it's only taken 9 years to do! It's now on somebody else's to do list. 

I nearly took that momentum and map one of my 1994 cars, but I couldn't resist going back to shaping. 

I decided to go back to 1994. Actually, I had made a start on another car, but I decided not to go back to it, but start a brand new project. It was this, the 1994 Lotus 109 Mugen-Honda. 

I think it had one of the best liveries that season, and it was unfortunately the last classic Team Lotus car, although Lotus made a return of sorts in 2010. This car had so many drivers, Johnny Herbert, Alex Zanardi, Pedro Lamy, Philippe Adams, Eric Bernard and Mika Salo, have I missed anyone out? 

There's some more history in my model blog here

But it's July 2020, and it's been two weeks since Alex Zanardi had another horrible accident. His life is a mixture of triumph (CART Champion and Paralympic Gold medalist) and horrific accidents (Spa 1993, losing his legs in a CART race and now this). As of the time of writing he's still in an induced coma from a hand-bike accident when colliding with a truck. I hope you make a recovery #ForzaAlex.

It goes without saying that when this car is completed, it will be dedicated to Alex. 

Lotus began the 1994 season with the C spec version of the 107, which began life in 1992. One of the new Lotus 109's was ready by the Spanish Grand Prix and Johnny Herbert drove that car, whilst Zanardi had to settle for the 107C at the Spanish and Canadian GP. The 109 was based on the 107, so there are many similarities and I could use the 107C as a guide for my own car. 

The GP4 107C is by Paolo RF900R (who is still creating excellent cars from the 1990s for ASR Formula), which Oggo brought into GP4. The cars for the 1993 mod are great, but my only complaint is the lack of consistency with the scaling between the cars. So the first thing I did for my 109 was to base it on the proportions of my other 1994 cars. In reality, the 109 has a shorter wheelbase, but in GP4, my 109 will have a longer wheelbase. 

I started out with the wings on this car, they are pretty unique and I enjoyed recreating them. I probably went a little overboard with the details on the rear wing, whilst the front wing is pretty straight forward. Like the McLaren, the front wing end plates have a small horizontal element at the rear. The suspension is lifted off my Williams and Ligier and re-positioned. The main chassis came together quite quickly, the longest part was the nose. You'll notice in these screens there's a slight bulge, which isn't immediately obvious on pictures, with the livery hiding it very well. My shape kind of reminds me of a beluga whale. 

The Lotus also has uniquely shaped barge-boards, compared to other cars from that season it looks like it was put on backwards. The mirrors are also quite pyramid shaped, which I also like. The car also featured a unique interpretation of putting  hole in the engine cover, adopting holes to the side near the rear end. 

With the car coming together quite quickly, I started to get a little carried away with the detail, and below is the result. Now when I started making 1994 cars, I had consciously decided not to spend too much time making engine parts, rather just sticking to the gearbox detail, but I got a little ambitious. The odd thing is that I've only created the rear half of the engine. The reason being that from some angles you can see a bit more into the engine from the engine cover holes, and also I'm going to put a cooling hole in the rear of the sidepod, so it would be nice to see in. In terms of internals, this is the most detail I've put in on any GP4 car.

The car is still a work in progress, I need to finish the rear of the chassis, the cockpit needs a seat and details adding, and I'm going to add some more details on the side of the gearbox. There's a few more details to add here and there, and then body lines. 

I hope you enjoyed this update, I'll post more shots when the car is hopefully complete. 

Update 2 of 1/43 Model Review: 1994 Ligier JS39B Renault

Well I couldn't help myself to some new 1994 models, and with Spark and Minichamps both releasing the 1994 Ligier, when Schumacher tested the car, I couldn't resist getting them both, taking some pics and comparing the two. If you want to see my other posts about this model and my GP4 car, then you can see the articles here.

Spark

Minichamps

It's nice how Spark have put on most of the tobacco decals leaving just a little bit to finish off, but both cars come with the decals to update the cars, not that I trust myself, particularly when these models are so expensive when new now. Almost immediately, playing spot the difference, there are quite a few to spot and from the wide shot, there's quite a few differences in proportions.

You don't get the difference in the modern models, as I believe they get geometric data from the teams, which is why the quality and proportions are very accurate. I can only assume they don't have that data for these models. As noted in other reviews, the front wing is massive on the Minichamps model, but what is there is a lot more refined. There is also much more curvature on the Minichamps model, which I think is a bit more realistic. The rollover bar and sidepods are very basic and quite similar on both models, the only real difference is right at the back of the engine cover, there is a square cut out of the Spark model to allow for the rear wing supports.

Spark

Minichamps

Spark have done some more squat mirrors, which I think over exaggerates the real car a little bit. Bot cars model the round cockpit well, but the Minichamps driver figure and seat fit into it better. Though I prefer the Minichamps helmets, they clearly didn't look at photos of the test as Schumacher ran an early season version of his helmet without the red 'wings' and elf logo. In terms of the overalls, Spark seem to have created some Ligier colours with Benetton logos, odd. On that front, I much prefer Minichamps. 

Spark

Minichamps

The Spark front wing looks so boxy, and the endplate doesn't quite have the unique contours, which I think Minichamps does a lot better in capturing (if it wasn't for the fact that it's huge!). Again the Minichamps wheels and rims are for me much better proportionally speaking. 

Spark

Minichamps

I do prefer the Minichamps suspension, just the points where it attaches to the chassis is much more accurate. However in terms of the lumps and bumps on the monocoque, Spark do seem to have them more prominantly.

Spark

Minichamps

I remember when I was doing the GP4 car that the rear of the engine cover around the Renault logo was not easy, but both manufacturers have done it well, but as I said earlier, the Spark version does have a better trailing edge. Notice the great difference in depth of the main rear wing plain, the Spark car running a particularly low downforce configuration. 

Spark

Minichamps

It's clearer from the above angle the rear wing differences. The bigger difference is in the diffusers, with Spark sporting the early season diffuser whilst Minichamps have produce the end of season version. 

Spark

Minichamps

My, the front wing is huge on the Minichamps car, did I mention that already? Minichamps have added a visor, which is a nice touch, whilst Spark have painted it in the colours of the chassis. The steering wheels are fairly standard and dull, but I prefer Spark's aerials and pitot tubes. 

GP4: 1994 Ligier JS39B (Australian GP) WIP 3

In the last of my walkaround work in progress shots of the Ligier, I concentrate on this post on the central and rear parts of the 3D car I have shaped. 

For my 1994 cars, I've been fairly minimal in making the inside parts under the engine cover, but for where some of the cars that have holes cut in them, you can see through the airbox. One of the problems with modelling this is in GP4 you can get some flickering if the internal parts are too close to the surface.

The engine cover changed a bit for the late season, the hump at the back begins much sooner, and there is an additional bump above it (this is a bit clearer in the previous screenshot). The top of the sidepod is flat and not curved or at an angle, so that was quite simple to model.

Moving to the rear of the car, and we have a new diffuser. The outer parts of the diffuser are from my 1994 McLaren, with the exhaust integrated into the top part of it. The central diffuser section is quite unique, with three seperate elements, and the top central part is transparent so that you can see the rain light. The jack points are always a fun bit of detail to put in. As so much of the underside of this car is exposed, though still difficult to see with it being under shadow, I've put a bit of detail on the gearbox, the suspension mounting points and the actual suspension springs themselves.

Here you can see the opening at the rear of the sidepod, and you can see the rear suspension and rear wheel hub.

On the late season Renault engined cars, and into 1995, there is this small inlet, almost like a periscope sticking out of the engine cover. I found someone selling a late season rear wing endplate, so there were a couple of nice reference photos from that. Again, you can't see it on the screenshot, but I've put a bit of detail on the rear wing. It's interesting from the front view, the main black element covers the middle element, looking like they are running quite low wing. If you remember my model review of the Spark model, I complained that they basically only modelled the top element and coloured it all white, but I can kind of see how that mistake happened having inspected various photos.

I hope to get this car mapped fairly soon, and I will release the car as is for anyone who has the talent and time to paint this car.

GP4: 1994 Ligier JS39B (Australian GP) WIP 2

In this blogpost, I'll do a walkaround some of the details of the 1994 car. Buried away in the Ligier museum, there are a few good detail shots of the car on my usual resource site http://www.gurneyflap.com/ligiermuseum.html

Ligier ran quite a small front wing endplate at the beginning of the season, but upgraded to quite a big endplate for the end of the season. I've put the wireframe on so that you can see there is quite bump half way down the endplate, I'm not quite sure why. The under side on the leading edge curves outwards, before directing the air to the inside of the front wheels on the trailing edge. So it's not quite as straight forward as I had initially thought, but I'm always pleased to add the detail onto my 3D model. The front wing is pretty basic, the main plane is raised in the centre section, a smoother version of their 1993 concept. The two white dots on the nose I'm not sure what they were for exactly, but again it's always nice to add a few details on when I spot them. 

The nose itself is an interesting shape and one where my version differs from my resources. The flat side does not go all the way to the tip of the nose, instead it is rounded for half the width of the front wing. It also sits higher than the early season resource models I've been referring to, and is actually not too dissimilar in height from the 1993 car which was slightly raised. I also added a hole at the trailing edge of the nose cone for the steering arm as per the real car. 

The front suspension is actually lifted from the 1994 Williams, just amended in position to fit this car. The brake duct is new, although I could not find any good shots of the brake ducts from the late season car, but I put on quite a generic one. The mounting points are different from the Williams, but quite straight forward on this car. For the front lower wishbone, I had to cut out a section of the monocoque, again in a similar way to the Williams. It's not very clear on this screenshot, but I've put quite a bit of detail into the section underneath the nose.



Ligier run a double pitot tube, one directly behind the other. The team added bargeboards mid-season, it's quite a simple rectangular shape, though it has a bit cut off for the suspension arm to pass through. There are also a couple of bumps on the monocoque to factor in, the one above the diagonal suspension arm, which I had to put a hole in as well, and there are two small bumps on top of the monocoque, in between the pitot tube and the aerial. For me, it's quite a fun challenge to get the normals working well with the flat side of the monocoque and the curved section along the top, which dissipates as you get towards the opening of the sidepod and the cockpit. You can see the curved bodyline at the sidepod opening which wasn't easy to get right. Actually, I departed from my normal method of doing body lines, simple having detached indents to save time and actually is slightly more effective.

The mirrors sit quite low on the Ligier, but when I modelled the rear wing elements, I realised it had a very small gap to see through. The Ligier had quite a large and rounded cockpit opening, particularly along the sides. It means much more of the driver body (taken from my 1995 Ferrari) and the seat is exposed. The dash and steering wheel mounts are all covered by the top of the monocoque, and though the rules threated to change this arrangement (in accidents heads were hitting the front of the cockpit), it didn't get fully implemented until 1995 (as far as I can tell). From the photos that I have, there was simply just a screen, or for the museum car most of the cockpit had been stripped. Other cars have done a generic dashboard model, but I've decided to follow the pictures and just have a small rectangular screen and one button for the fire extinguisher. The visor (coloured in black here) is also an upside down L shape, which has been a feature of Ligier cars in the early 90s.