It was not the first time that the driver who won the World Championship left the Williams team the following year, Mansell and Prost had also left earlier that decade, as did Piquet after 1987. He had apparently had offers from McLaren, Benetton and Ferrari, Hill surprisingly went for the TWR ran Arrows team, who finished 9th with one point to their name in 1996. However they were the main test team for Bridgestone on their debut season, which would bring an advantage against the Goodyear rubber ran by most the other teams.
Team-mate Pedro Diniz brought substantial backing with him, along with new Yamaha engines and later in the year a new techincal director, John Barnard from Ferrari. The car struggled to qualify at the first race in Melbourne and retired on the parade lap, and the car retired more often than it finished. It was uncompetitive, but by mid-season it began to fight for points. At Silverstone, Hill's home race, he ran well and scored a point for sixth place. Hill qualified third at Hungary, ran second behind Schumacher and then passed him when the German's tyres were shod. Hill lead for much of the race until a throttle linkage problem cost him considerable pace with a few laps to go. Villeneuve caught him and passed him on the grass on the last lap. Hill still finished an incredible second for the team.
Though Hill was the team-leader, Diniz out-qualified the champion at the French, Belgian and Japanese tracks, the later two both known as challenging drivers tracks and managed a fifth place at the Luxembourg GP at the Nurburgring.
Minichamps produced the Arrows car. It's nice to have the red nose and rear wing end plates on Hill's car and yellow on Diniz's car. The shape of the model is pretty decent representation of the real car. The most disappointing thing for me is how low the driver sits in the car. That and the slightly wonky front wing, I still quite like the model.
Minichamps 433970101
In the UK, they released four special versions of various Damon Hill's cars. The Arrows one is based on the British GP, where after a difficult year so far, he scored points at his home race. Score: 7/10
I've not heard of JPS models before, and again there's not many good photos of this, but this is a pretty reasonable model kit. The model is based on the Hungarian GP, with the amended airbox inlet. However, that looks quite a skinny rear wing for the high downforce track. The wheels look like they sit a bit too wide. I think the model is of similar standard to the Minichamps model. Score: 7/10
IXO
Released in 2022, Ixo brings this nice budget version of the TWR Arrows.
Jean Alesi was joined by Pedro Diniz for the 1999 season, but the team suffered from poor gearbox reliability and meant that the car rarely finished even though it was fairly competitive. In the end the team scored 5 sixth placed finishes to finish the year in 8th place.
Diniz was lucky to walk away unharmed after being flipped at the European Grand Prix at the first corner, which saw the Sauber's rollover bar fail and leaving the Diniz's head exposed and the car came to a rest upside down, presumably resting on Diniz's helmet. For a moment, the world held their breath and feared the worst. Thankfully he was OK and the marshalls were able to get him out the car quickly.
The 1999 Sauber was quite a small but long car, certainly compared to its predecessor, and Minichamps have done a good job on this relatively simple shaped car. The Petronas logos on the top of the sidepod are nicely done, as is the chrome front wing supports. I miss the days when Sauber ran different headrest and mirror colours for their drivers as a way to tell them apart, with Alesi running red and Diniz running yellow. Score: 7/10
Welcome back to the third installment of the LigierJS43 walkaround, a car I made for the 1996 mod for GP4 with the help of Oggo, Soulbringer and Kedy89. The car won one race incredibly at Monaco, though there were only 4 classified finishers in a bonkers wet race which you can see highlights of below.
Coulthard ran in Schumacher's helmet, it rained, a first corner crash with Verstappen on slicks being the cause, Schumacher crashed into a barrier on lap 1. After 5 laps, only 13 cars remained from the 21 that started. Hill lead and his engine blew up, Alesi lead and he retired. Villeneuve was struggling and crashed into a Forti. Irvine was having all kinds of dramas and took out another two cars when doing a recovery spin when Salo'sTyrrell came around the corner and into the back of him. With four runners left, Frentzen gave up on the penultimate lap and pulled into the pits, leaving only the three cars to actually finish the race - all of them on the podium. Oh if all that would happen in 2019!
Here is a look at the side head protection, and the unique way in which it joins the engine cover. Rather than tapering down, it tapers into the rollover bar, with the fuel cap neatly positioned in there. There is a mini shark-fin at the top, not unique to Ligier.
The front of Ligier's sidepods are very similar to the 1995 car. Notice the floor underneath, where it is higher off the ground at the front half, before it joins with the rest of the floor half way down. The winglets at the rear are a unique take with an additional element half way down the sidepod. The rear wing end plate fence does not extend all the way to the winglet, but enough to cover the rear wheels from the airflow in the middle of the car.
The shape of the sidepods at the rear is different to the 1995 car, with the JS43 extending the top surface to lead the airflow smoothly to the winglets, leading to something of an undercut at the bottom.
The 1995 Ligier and Benetton had an aerofoil cover for the upper suspension elements, with the engine cover going neatly underneath it. The concept is largely kept by Ligier, and is also developed on the Benetton B196. The bulges at the centre of the car are always tricky to get right and integrate with the rest of the engine cover whilst keeping normals smooth.
Here is a wireframe shot of the rear of the car. It's got an interesting diffuser, with multiple vanes on the outer diffuser, but the central part has a deep undercut and the top element is split into a number of elements. For me, these things and the rear wing support which integrates the rear jack hold is always fun to model.
Coming to the insides of the car, all the parts, bar the engine itself is unique to this car. Even the cylinders are unique to the Mugen-Honda V10. You can see the rear suspension covers clearly. Kedy89 has done a great job with the textures - not overdoing it, not making it too bright.
The radiators are asymmetric, and you can see a small radiator on the left side hidden under the raised sidepods. I like modelling the insides, but its easy to over do it on the detail, so the idea was to put the main parts in, keep it low-poly, so that you get an idea of what's there rather than focussing a lot of effort into creating something nobody sees or has time to inspect in-game. If you look carefully, you'll see the exhaust is in the central section of the diffuser, looking to exploit gains from an exhaust-blown-diffuser, which has its roots from the B194.
I hope you enjoyed this walkaround. The Ligier didn't really excite me when I came to making it, but having spent time looking at it and remodelling it, I've come to appreciate some of the nice details that has gone into it, and I hope that's come across in these blog posts.
This is the second post on the 1996LigierJS43 made for GP4, shaped primarily by me, with help from great modders Oggo, Soulbringer & Kedy89. The car is available in the 1996 mod which you can download for GP4 in my downloads section. You can also find it converted in many other games.
As mentioned in my last post, the lovely nose is made by Oggo for the BenettonB196, which is perfect for the LigierJS43, both based on the same original design. The front wing itself is pretty basic, where the outer parts of the main plane are lower than the central section. So there's nothing out of the ordinary from this shot.
As we look from behind the front wing, you can see that there are two vanes underneath the front wing and there is a vortex generator at the rear of the front wing endplate.
There are a number of bumps present on the monocoque of the Ligier, which are different from the Benetton car, and the front suspension is unique to Ligier.
As we move towards the cockpit, I wanted to show the wireframe so that you can see where the curves on the car are and where the detail has been put in. The section around the fuel cap was probably the most difficult to get right for me, as addition of the side head protection led to a few different solutions with what to do behind it for aero benefit, Ligier's perhaps not being particularly smooth.
Again I kept the wireframe on for this view of the sidepods. Like its predecessor, and the Benetton B194 it features a slightly raised sidepod, or perhaps it is lowered in the central section, which is a concept that McLaren took to an extreme in 2011. From a modelling perspective, you can see the direction of the polygons that help ensure the curved shape and smooth normals.
Having a look at the cockpit and it's great the Kedy89 was able to put some great detail onto the shape.
The next car to feature in my GP4 walkarounds is the 1996LigierJS43, powered by the Mugen Honda engine. As always, you can read more about how the car faired during the 1996 season as well as the model review here: 1/43-model-review-1996-ligier-js43-mugen.html
As always, I have to thank my collaborators on this, which are Soulbringer and Kedy89 who did a great job in mapping and painting the car, I'm grateful that these talented and committed modders were working on one of my cars.
I also have to thank Oggo, because the nose and monocoque section of the car is taken from his excellent BenettonB196. The lumps and bumps and suspension connections are all unique to the Ligier, but I'm grateful to Oggo for allowing me to use the front of his car as a base.
The 1996 Ligier still bore similarities to the Benetton because of the links between the two teams from back in 1994 when Flavio Briatore, who was running Benetton, bought Ligier. 50% was bought by Tom Walkinshaw (of TWR) in 1995, who was with Benetton at the time, and took over the running of the Ligier team and took some Benetton staff with him. One of these was Frank Dernie, the lead designer of this car, who worked for Benetton under a TWR contract, so naturally he was brought across whether he wanted to or not! This happened with a number of staff.
If you remember, the 1995 Ligier, from the outside, looked almost identical to the Benetton B195, but the team maintains that everything under the car was completely different. The 1995 Ligier was not particularly competitive, whilst the Benetton was at the front of the field, so that all makes sense. SO whilst the nose and monocoques were largely the same as their 1995 competitors, that's why there is a similarity between the two cars. However, the Ligier JS43 looks more like a developed 1995 concept.
However, Guy Ligier and Tom Walkinshaw did not get on, and Flavio didn't sell the remaining 50% to Walkinshaw as had initially agreed, so Walkinshaw went and bought the Arrows team instead. This culminated around March 1996, and explains why the Power Horse logos started the first few races on the Ligier before migrating to Arrows for the remainder of the year. Ligier was then sold to Alain Prost who had bought the team with the expectation that it would become almost the French national team, that French backing never sadly materializing.
I quite enjoyed making this car, it has some interesting details all the way through the car and there was a reasonable source of photos to be able to make the car fairly accurately. I will explain some of the details in later posts, but I'm quite pleased with how the whole car has come together, and Kedy89 has done a great job in re-creating the livery changes throughout the year.
The 1996Ligier was an evolution of the previous car, the JS41 which bore a remarkable resemblance to the Championship winning BenettonB195, thanks to the shared ownership of Tom Walkinshaw (TWR). However, Guy Ligier and Tom Walkinshaw parted company, with Walkinshaw taking his funds to FootworkArrows, Ligier would soon be bought out by Alain Prost.
So 1996 was the last season for the French Ligier team, and the Monaco Grand Prix would provide it's final win, and Olivier Panis' only win in F1. Panis qualified 14th, but a good strategy on a drying track meant he would benefit from the retirements of Hill and Alesi to earn the win. Although only 4 cars finished the race, and 7 cars classified, it shouldn't undermine what an impressive victory it was on a track where it is impossible to overtake.
Pedro Diniz, one of the better pay driver stories from the 90s, brought his links with Parmalat up the grid to the Ligier team for 1996, having spent two difficult seasons at the tail end of the grid with Forti. He didn't fair too badly, but is perhaps best remembered for a fiery retirement from the Argentine Grand Prix when his engine combusted spectacularly.
I don't usually collect both drivers of each car, but Diniz's car was, out of all the standard cars from 1996, perhaps the most valuable. It featured a yellow head-rest compared to Panis' blue. The front end of the car still bore much resemblance to the Benetton, but as you get towards the rear suspension, you see they have taken the concepts of the B195 a bit further, but I'll go into this more when I talk about my GP4 model. Another nice car from Minichamps here. Score: 7/10
Minichamps 430960099
Minichamps also did a special Monaco GP version, with Panis carrying around the French tricolore flag. The version I had also had converted tobacco sponsors. I miss the way Minichamps used to make their flags out of a cloth like material, the ones with the modern day are a bit too plastic looking, though they do stay in place better. This was one of the first models I had in a Minichamps tall box to accommodate the flag. It's a shame they didn't update the barge board from the early season model. The logo on the side of the nose is also not there at the Monaco GP. Score: 7/10
The BBR kit comes from the season opening Australian Grand Prix, which ran the Power Horse sponsor on the engine cover, before following Tom Walkinshaw to Footwork/Arrows. The rolloever bar doesn't quite look right to me,
So far, I've rated the Tameo models from 1996 very highly, and this is another quality model from Tameo, this one from the Monaco GP. It comes with wet tyres, as it rained for the first half of the Grand Prix, drying out towards the end when slick tyres were used. Score: 10/10
The magazine, Formula 1 Car Collection have recently done an issue featuring the Monaco GP winning car. The car looks very plain without the tobacco sponsorship. The car is nicely made and is just fine for a budget model. Score: 7/10
