1/43 Model Review: 1999 Prost AP02 Peugeot

Background

After a disappointing 1998 campaign, the new Prost AP02 Peugeot was more competitive. Trulli managed a podium finish at the European GP, but Panis' season was more disappointing with only two sixth placed finishes, though there were promising qualifying performances, but strategic errors and bad luck hampered good results.

It's perhaps telling that both drivers left the team at the end of the year, looking for a better team more suited to their obvious talents, with Panis taking a test driver role at McLaren and Trulli heading for Jordan.

The car features unique front sidepod design with flaps on the top, however this design never caught on and was dropped on the AP03.

Minichamps

Minichamps 430990018

At the time, I thought the Prost was one of the longest F1 cars and I wondered whether there was quite enough space to fit it in the old smaller Minichamps box. Obviously it did, but Minichamps had to make longer boxes from 2010 onwards.

Minichamps 400990119

At the end of 1999, Jenson Button tested for McLaren and Prost before taking up a race seat at Williams for 2000. This car was updated for a 2017 release in a limited edition run of just 648. The updates are on the colour which is metallic blue now, and sharper sponsors, though there are no barcodes, but a blank space for you to apply your own tobacco decals.
Score: 7/10

1/43 Model Review: 2009 Brawn GP BGP01 Mercedes

Background

Honda left the sport in 2008, but Ross Brawn and Nick Fry knew having spent much of 2008 designing the 2009 car under new rules, that it could be competitive. So they put together a plan to rescue the team, buying it for £1 from Honda and renamed Brawn GP with Mercedes Engines. The car was immediately quick in testing, with thanks to the effective use of a loophole creating a double diffuser, but also to their outwash front wing. Button converted 6 victories in the first 7 races.

Despite his team-mate, Barrichello, and Red Bull's Vettel's late challenge, Button was able to hold on with a battling drive in Brazil to clinch the title with one race to spare. Brawn also won the Constructors' title before being bought out by Mercedes GP.

Minichamps

There are a host of Brawns created by Minichamps, so I'll cover the ones that I did own first.

Minichamps 400090123

In the first parts of qualifying, Barrichello was the quicker of the two Brawns, but Button snatched pole position. Running into the first corner, he had contact with Kovalainen and Webber which damaged his diffuser and front wing, but managed to finish 2nd after Vettel and Kubica's late race collision.

I picked up this car fairly cheaply in a bundle, and it's the Australian GP version with Barrichello in the car. The early season Brawn livery was beautifully plain and simple, applied to the nicest looking car on the grid. I like how the fluorescent yellow also recoloured the driver's usual helmet colour schemes. Minichamps have done a really nice job on this car, partly because of its simplicity. I will give one score at the end rather than grading them individually. 

Minichamps 400090622

My first Brawn purchase, and the one that remains in my collection, is the Brazilian GP version where Button clinched the title with a race to spare. The car had a few more appendages around the sidepod region as well as a few more sponsors on the car, including have a different colour yellow on the front wing, which clashed with the Brawn's fluorescent yellow.

Minichamps 436090022

In early 2018, we received the World Champions edition which has the car from the final race in Abu Dhabi GP livery. Perhaps with so many versions of the Brawns available already, this perhaps didn't sell out quite as quickly as the other versions.

Well, onto the cars that I haven't owned, and they are basically the early season versions of Button's wins, where he dominated the first half of the year.

Minichamps 400090022

This is the standard model for the year, which is basically the Australian GP version, but with a hard tyres (no green stripe on the outside wall).

Minichamps 400090122

The Australian GP was the first race on the calendar, where Brawn's speed in testing was confirmed as Button dominated the weekend. Here, this model comes with a standing figure and soft tyres (and their relevant markings).

Minichamps 400090222

This is the Malaysian GP version, which did not make it to full distance due to the monsoon conditions. This car comes with wet tyres, but the rest of the car is pretty much the Australia spec car. 

Minichamps 400090322

The Bahrain car features Virgin galactic logos, being the only major (it's not really major at all) difference between this and the other early season cars.

Minichamps 400090422

The Spanish GP was the scene of Jenson's fourth victory. You do not get many factory produced models where film promotions are created, like the Red Bulls with Star Wars and Superman, Marussia promoting Cars, or Lotus promoting the Batman Dark Knight movies, or Jaguar's Ocean's movie and Terminator. There are probably more but back to Brawn, there is a much smaller promotion on the rear fin for the Terminator Salvation movie.


Suddenly, the Brawn cars stop there, I'm not sure why we didn't get the Monaco and the Turkey win editions, nor any special editions of Barrichellos victory later that year. But perhaps there's enough of them already, and judging by the fact I owned three versions and that's less than half of them, it probably indicates that a) I'm not that avid a collector, or rather b) there's just too many to collect. Having said that, these models were reasonably priced back then and the race specific versions were snapped up and their values rose quite quickly. Anyway, for a diecast model, this is a lovely model to have in the collection.

Score: 8/10

Tameo

Tameo TB026

Tameo's car is beautiful, based on the Brazilian GP. The quality comes from the detail you can attain with a resin model, it's nice to have the slits in the rear wing endplate, and the detail on the front wing endplate and bargeboard/mirror regions are better defined than the Minichamps diecast versions. This is factory made, only 199 of them exist in this form, and it gets top marks from me.
Score: 10/10

Ixo / Formula 1 Car Collection / Altaya

The Ixo car comes in the Formula 1 Car Collection in the Brazilian GP livery, whilst you can get a Barrichello car from the Australian GP with a driver figure. The general shape of the car is not bad, but when you get to the details it's not particularly great. The sidepod turning vanes for example are at completely the wrong angle, and for the Brazilian GP the didn't change the rear wing endplates. If you could get the Minichamps Brawns for 2009 prices, I'd say go for that, but these days, the price has more than doubled for the World Champion collection version, but you can pick up a second hand version of the Minichamps car for a similar price to getting this Ixo car brand new.
Score: 6/10

Where are they now?

Ross Brawn was ousted from Mercedes as team principal before the team saw their success in the turbo-hybrid era, thanks in no small part to Bernie Ecclestone. However, many will admit that it was Brawn who laid the foundations for their success. Brawn is now a key member of Liberty who own the sport, leading primarily the technical direction which should see large scale rule changes for 2021.

Nick Fry is now involved with esports company Fnatic. Brawn and Fry still held shares in the Mercedes team until 2011. Fry was replaced by Toto Wolff in 2013.

Jenson Button raced until 2016, and having made a one-off appearance in 2017, retired from F1 and is now racing in Super GT in Japan as well as LMP1 in WEC.

Rubens Barrichello holds the records for the most Grand Prix's entered and competed. Since retiring from F1, he took part in a season of Indycar, but mostly races in Brazilian Stock cars, as well as taking part in 24 Hours of Daytona.

Winners of the 1st Race vs Champions (1990 - 2019)

We just witnessed a reinvigorated Valterri Bottas dominate the Australian Grand Prix. He was close to Hamilton in qualifying, but snatched the lead convincingly at the start and drove away to win by over 20 seconds. Granted that Hamilton's car was damaged, it was still an impressive margin of victory. Verstappen had to overtake cars in front of him to finish where his pace deserved and Ferrari's pace had vanished this weekend having to settle for 4th and 5th, unable to find a good set up and use the tyres properly.

But, as they all say, this is Australia, and it throws up some odd results and can give false readings as to how the season will pan out. Melbourne has hosted the opening round of the F1 World Championship since 1996, though Bahrain opened the season a couple of times in 2006 & 2010. There used to be a trend where the winner of the first Grand Prix usually goes on to win the World Championship. I've gone back and looked through race winners compared to champions from 1990 through to today to see how true it is.

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1990s

Only twice in the 90's did non-champions win the first race.

1997 David Coulthard

Minichamps 530974390

Here is Coulthard's McLaren in pre-season testing livery. Coulthard would win another Grand Prix that year, as McLaren and Mercedes were starting to become more competitive, but they weren't title contenders. That would come in 1998, but it would be Hakkinen who would win the Championships.
Villeneuve was taken out by Eddie Irvine's Ferrari on the first corner of the season and retired, opening up the opportunity for McLaren to take their first victory since Senna won in Adelaide in 1993.

1999 Eddie Irvine

Hot Wheels 24626

1999 was meant to be the season that Michael Schumacher finally won the title in a Ferrari, but a broken leg half way through the season put an end to his challenge. So Ferrari rallied behind Irvine, kind of, to take the challenge to Hakkinen and McLaren. Hakkinen should have ran away with the title that year but mistakes from him and the team made it much more difficult. And Ferrari? Well I think they'd rather wait a year than break their duck with Irvine to be honest. Hakkinen retired from the first race with throttle problems, whilst Schumacher had issues before the start of the race that meant he started at the back of the grid and finished outside the points.

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2000s

Similarly in the noughties, only twice did the race winner not go on to win the title.

2003 David Coulthard

Minichamps 530034305

Coulthard makes the list again in 2003. Ferrari were so dominant by now that they started the season with the previous years car and were still competitive. Having said that, McLaren did the same for 2003 and ran the updated car for the whole year. Schumacher damaged his car whilst battling with Raikkonen, whilst Montoya spun out of the lead, leaving Coulthard to pick up the pieces and win the race.

2005 Giancarlo Fisichella

Minichamps 400050006

Remember F1 went through a phase of single shot qualifying, where drivers took one turn each to set a qualifying time? It comes unstuck if the weather changes half way through, which it did in Australia 2005. Alonso qualified in 14th position whilst team mate Fisichella took pole. Fisichella showed the potential of the Renault car by taking victory at the opening round. But it would be his team-mate who would take the title, whilst Fisichella faded into the number 2 driver role.

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2010s

However, when you enter the last decade, 6 times, more than half of the winners of the first race has not gone on to win the World Championship. Before we delve into why that is, let's have a look at the each case first.

2010 Fernando Alonso

Mattel Elite T6289

Alonso's debut with Ferrari ended with victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix. The car wasn't that quick, but a late season charge meant that he was in contention for the championship going into the final round, but a strategy error cost him the title to Vettel. 

Minichamps 530104311

Australia was the 2nd race that year and Jenson Button justified his decision to leave the team whom he won the Championship with, to go to Hamilton's team and prove himself. Button took an opportunistic victory at Melbourne, making the best strategy calls in a race with changeable conditions. But over the course of the season, Button was not able to mount enough of a challenge to defend his title.

2012 Jenson Button

Minichamps 537124303

Button won in Australia again in 2012, but the first half of 2012 was about the teams trying to get their heads around the new Pirelli tyres, which saw seven different winners in the first seven races. It wasn't until mid-season when Vettel gained the upper hand on the Championship despite a plucky challenge from Alonso in a much slower Ferrari.

2013 Kimi Raikkonen

Minichamps 410130107

Kimi Raikkonen started off the 2013 season with a win, having won at the tail end of the 2012 season as well. Whilst the car showed flashes of pace, it was not quick enough to mount a serious title challenge.

2014 Nico Rosberg

Minichamps 413140644

Mercedes were miles ahead when the 2014 season started in the new turbo hybrid era, but it was Rosberg, not Hamilton who would take the first victory of 2014. Hamilton was on pole, but engine issues meant he was third in the first corner and fifth at the end of the first lap before retiring. The battle between the two teammates ran to the final Grand Prix where Hamilton was triumphant.

2017 Sebastian Vettel

Looksmart LSF107

With a major change in regulations, Ferrari built a competitive car, though it wasn't quite on par with the Mercedes, but Vettel made good use of it, leading the championship for more than half the season - not the important half though. After mid-season, mistakes and misjudgments were costly and their challenge fizzled out. At the Australian Grand Prix, again Hamilton took pole position, but Vettel remained close in 2nd. When Hamilton pitted early, he was held up by Verstappen who was yet to stop, allowing Vettel to come back out ahead of Hamilton after his stop.

2018 Sebastian Vettel

Bburago 18-36808V

2018 started so promisingly for Ferrari. Though Hamilton aced qualifying, an opportunistic pitstop by Ferrari under Virtual Safety Car propelled the German to first place. By half way through the season, Vettel was leading the championship, and in a strange case of deja-vu, Vettel's challenge faded in much the same way it did in 2017.

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So what can we conclude? Formula 1 is a lot less predictable than it used to be and whilst it's not as competitive as we'd like, it's still in a better place than it was. We still moan that it's only ever going to be one of two, possibly three, teams who can win the title, but there were seasons in the past where one driver dominated for much of the season.

Is Bottas going to win the title, challenge for the title, or was this a one off? Time will tell, but all the predictions for Melbourne turned out to be wrong, as Ferrari were slow and Mercedes were well ahead. Nobody gave Bottas a chance, but the reality is, if the Mercedes can be competitive throughout the season, Bottas has all the tools to challenge. But his team-mate is five-times World Champion, Lewis Hamilton, and when he was on it, he was unstoppable last season. However we haven't seen that kind of form throughout an entire season yet, and he has been beaten before, but that took Rosberg using everything at his disposal to throw Lewis off his game, personally, I can't see Bottas doing that this season. Hamilton has been on pole 8 times in his career, and has won 4 of the last Championships, but has only won this race twice and only one of those times in a Mercedes.