GP4: 1993 JJ Lehto helmet

When you think of early-mid 1990s helmets, you're probably thinking of simple designs, designed to be seen on a small screen, immediately identifiable with bold colours and basic shapes. They were perfect material for little boy drawings, memorable, distinct, simple, iconic. 

For JJ Lehto, his main helmet design followed this trend for 1991 and 1992, with a white and blue base with red lines. 

For 1993, Uffedesigns (who is still doing the odd helmet for modern day F1 drivers), added a bold five leaf design to the top of his helmet, graduating from green to yellow to orange. This varied in colour at different rounds of the early season, and is troublesome for anyone trying to recreate it in sim racing, because it invariably goes over seams and it's incredibly hard not only to get the design lined up, but getting the gradient colours to match over the seams is very, very difficult. 

By the British GP, the design on the top went to a simple chequered pattern, that ran through to the back of the helmet and this design would carry through to his 1994 season at Benetton and Sauber. 

However, Lehto ran a special helmet design for the 1993 Monaco GP, featuring a sunrise strip at the front and an even more elaborate five leaf design across the top, that also penetrating the side and rear design. The base is a repeated blue square pattern, with some white strips added along the bottom. It was so unusual for that era to have such a bold design. A tweaked version of this helmet was used at the Le Mans 24 hour race, I think in 1996 in a Gulf liveried McLaren F1. 

I've long been a fan of Öggo's 1993 helmet set, the exquisite helmet shapes, the detail and personalisation of each drivers helmet on a track specific level, was an inspiration to the update I did for 1994. It was an honour to be asked to be involved by recreating Lehto's 1993 Monaco GP helmet. Öggo had done a great job in creating the standard leaf top used at the early races. It took a lot of persuading, and as is usual when we make requests of one another, that it can take months, if not years, or even a decade in the case of the 1993 Tyrrell, that we fulfil each other's requests. He had made a little bit of a start, and in two batches, one in the autumn of 2024 and another couple of sessions early in 2025, I'm proud to say it was finally complete. 

I started by doing the blue base, which is a repeated pattern. It wasn't easy getting the level of blue to show through without it being over exposed. The red lines actually have a slight orange outline to make it stand out more. The leaves were hand drawn as best I can with a pen tool and simple trial and error to make it line up across two textures. Then it was getting the gradients in, adding a slight white glow to the inner edges to give it that layered spray-paint effect. In the end, I really enjoyed the challenge and how it turned out, and it really pops in the all black Sauber Mercedes car. 

1993 JJ Lehto Monaco GP helmet by fongu & Öggo 

I want to thank Quickslick for some help with photos, and to Öggo for his logos, this beautiful render and hastling me,  I mean inspiring me to do this project, not to mention the great Arai helmet shape and template upon which its painted on. 

You can download the recently released 1993 helmet pack that now includes Arai, Shoei and three types of Bell helmet, which includes my sole contribution of this beautiful helmet. It's really worth your time to have a look at this beautiful set, recreated with love and care and attention of detail synonymous with Öggo's work. 

I know there is a 1993 mod update being worked on, of which I have a little involvement with, which will include these new helmets as well as some other nice updates. I hope it won't be too long before the work on that is done and shared with this fantastic community. 

GP4: 1994 Benetton B194 Ford Cosworth - Australian GP version released

I proudly present to you the 1994 Benetton B194, created from scratch by me. I had previously written about the car and some insights into creating this car on another post, which you can read here:

more info

This car is the sixth car created for the 1994 season in GP4, based on how the car appeared at the Australian GP, with Michael Schumacher and Johnny Herbert at the wheel. Stay tuned for a 1994 mod update with more variations. I also include in this pack an external steering wheel, based on the internal wheel already included in the mod. I've also included a CSM update package for ease of install, obviously you'll need the 1994 Mod v4 installed first. 

So without further ado, here's the links. 

Enjoy!

GP4: 1994 Benetton B194 Ford Cosworth - coming soon

Coming soon to the 1994 mod is a new Benetton B194 made by me. This is presented as it appeared at the Australian GP, with Schumacher and Herbert at the wheel. 

1994 Benetton B194 by Fongu

Since Codemasters released their version of the B194 in the F1 2020 game, I was grateful to have that resource to be able to check my dimensions and proportions to it, taking nothing from that car at all. Indeed that car is based off one of the current show cars, which Mick Schumacher drove at Spa a few years back, and Damon Hill at Goodwood, but that configuration never actually raced, but is an amalgamation of parts from various races. 

1994 Benetton B194 by Fongu

This championship winning car is a cause of much debate and controversy, with many maintaining that it cheated to gain an advantage, whilst everyone involved with the team at the time, even nearly 30 years later, maintain they did not. I'm not going to solve any arguements with this blogpost, but my leaning is towards them not cheating. 

Martin Brundle drove his old 1992 Benetton B192 recently at the 2022 Austrian GP weekend, saying he and the team were taking an analogue car to race against the technologically-advanced and well-funded teams in Williams and McLaren. I believe when 'driver-aids' were banned from the 1994 season, the Benetton team were in the best position to adapt to the new regulations. Indeed they spent much of 1993 preparing for this. 

The team and Schumacher were working on a very basic and early iteration of a blown diffuser, and whilst Vettel and Red Bull in the 2010 era got Renault to continue to pump out hot exhaust gasses when the driver was off throttle, Schumacher had to learn to do this manually with his foot, and I think it's this odd usage of the throttle that Senna mistakenly confused for traction control, and also why Schumacher had such a large advantage over all three of his team-mates that season. 

On that amazing French GP start, Steve Matchett reveals in his book, 'The Mechanic's Tale', reveals that Michael had spent a test day that very week on perfecting his starts, knowing it was a weakness earlier that year. In terms of Option 13, I can understand having working in Software development, that sometimes its easier to not mess with code by deleting huge amounts of it, because it may break the whole thing, so it was easier to just hide it and not use it. In fact Larini admitted Ferrari had used traction control, albeit during practice only, in 1994 and McLaren were fined for using an automated upshift on their car, however they never fined Benetton for traction control deeming that the mechanism was there, but never used. 

*** Edit Jan 2023 -  A fantastic article, taking input from William Toet ***

The fire at the German GP is well documented, and whilst it was cheating, it is understandable how the Benetton team thought they had legitimate grounds to take the action that they did (removing a part from refueling rig) rather than erring on the side of caution.

I think this car is under-rated because of the cloud that hangs over it,  but it was a brilliantly nimble car that with a Ford V8 Cosworth engine, competed and beat the leading Renault V10s and Ferrari V12s. Generally, Schumacher was driving excellently that season, and there were mistakes, especially at the season finale in Adelaide where he had a massive shunt in practice, and then that famous off in the race, and that chop on Damon Hill that cost the Williams driver the championship. But he was unbeatable in the first half of the season, and it took a lot of events that conspired against the German that lead to Hill getting anywhere near the championship battle in the second half of the year. Whilst the Williams ended the season with the better car, in my opinion, and controversy aside, on a pure racing level, this Benetton B194 driven by Schumacher was fully deserving of the 1994 title. They prepared the best for the new regulations, Schumacher was extracting the very best out of the car, having spent years fine tuning it with the team, and I think the 1995 season which they dominated, should have been a repeat of the 1994 on a pure racing level - it was looking this was in the early races. 

1994 Benetton B194 by Fongu

So with all that in mind, I wanted especially to do justice with this car, a true legend of the sport, whatever side of the fence you fall on. I'm putting my best techniques learned over the last two decades to do this. With me still using Zmodeler 1 to create my shapes, it still takes time to manually put the car together in a polygon efficient manner, without key curves looking blocky. With having spent a bit more time in Photoshop in the past couple of years, my texture work continues to improve and there is a better mapping relationship between shaping and texturing processes. 

To make sure I'm well under GP4's polygon limit, I decided I would not create the engine and keep the gearbox detail to a minimum, sticking with a similar level of detail to the Codemasters version. In the end, this comes to around 55,000 faces, which is by comparison around 10,000 less than my Williams. 

1994 Benetton B194 by Fongu

On the shape front, I have opted for more rounded edges on the front and rear wing endplates, as well as the bargeboards. Where there are more curves, I've put more polygons to smooth them more than I have done in previous 1994 cars. To compensate for this increase in detail, I tried to use much less polygons on flat edges, on parts of the nose and the sidepod in particular. For details like screws and bolts, I've opted to shape them separately, mapping them to a larger and more detailed part of the texture, where previously I had painted them in a smaller resolution. This way, you can zoom in and see the detail. There's more detail in the wheel hub assembly than other cars, though the brake pad itself is still borrowed from when I created my 1996 cars. So pumping more energy into areas that you will see is hopefully a better solution than spending lots of time on an engine that you'll very rarely see in-game. For the cockpit, again I wasn't shy in using polygons where I needed to there. This will carry over into the internal cockpit shape. For wing levels, I tried to match the level of downforce with photos from the Australian Grand Prix as reference. 

On the texture side, I kept a similar mapping to the original 1994 car by Mckey and Oggo, with a second texture at half the size for various details, and I've created a new carbon texture. 

The livery is not that straight forward, and there's curves that passes various seams, so it took a while to get the base livery right. I was able to use a combination of the codemasters car and various photos to make sure the livery is as accurate as possible. 

1994 Benetton B194 by Fongu

For the logos, most of them are personally sourced, but I'm grateful to consult with GP4 logo-master Jurgen (Quickslick), to help me find better quality versions of some logos. On that, I ended up creating my own personal Mild Seven (and Benetton non-tobacco equivalent) vector myself. I searched for a long time, the logo on modern cars, on models, on decal sheets, well let's just say I noticed variations from the original car. Also the one on the engine cover, as it's on a slightly slanted surface, it's stretched vertically, as well as arced to fit - so making my own vector logo ensured the quality remained on the logo itself. Again with the text like 'Power By' on the engine cover, and the font on the lower rear wing, I took care to find the best match using a favourite online tool of mine, whatsthefont.com. I've also taken time to distinguish between black parts, carbon parts, and parts that look like a plain black plastic, and amended the alpha channel (reflection management) to suit. 

1994 Benetton B194 by Fongu

I'm always trying to improve and push myself to create as accurate a model as I can, without breaking the game when I put it in. Hopefully you can see some of the effort I've put into this model when you run it in game. 

My plan is to release this car as a stand alone release first, and then with a couple of variations and other new content in a 1994 mod update at a later date. 

1994 Benetton B194 by Fongu

1/43 Model Review: 1994 Sauber C13 Mercedes

It was announced last week that the Sauber name will depart from the sport for the first time since 1993. It's sad to see the heritage of the name be completely replaced by Alfa Romeo, as welcome as they were was when it was introduced for the 2018 season. Even through the BMW days when the team was entirely owned by the manufacturer, they were still called BMW Sauber. So I for one will be sad to see the name go. But here is a reminder of one of the more eventful seasons of their history.

Background

Following an impressive debut season, the 1994 season would again see Sauber challenge for the lower points scoring positions. After a huge accident at Monaco to Karl Wendlinger, the race after that weekend at Imola, the team developed higher cockpit sides to protect their driver. This development would be mandatory from the 1996 season. Andrea De Cesaris would fill his seat from the Canadian GP onwards, his 200th GP, but Wendlinger was due to come back for the final two GP's but that did not go ahead. The team tried to contact De Cesaris, but were unable to get a hold of him on holiday, so JJ Lehto who drove for them in 1993, freshly dropped by Benetton, filled the seat and De Cesaris retired. The team finished 8th in the Constructors' title.

Heinz-Harold Frentzen drove the entire season for the team, his debut year. He had a fan in Frank Williams early on, with reports he was going to be called up to Williams after Senna's tragic death, but the German decided to stay with Sauber, earning a Williams seat in 1997.

1994 saw the team run Mercedes-Benz engines, though they were rebadged Ilmor engines, but they received full manufacturer backing, harking back to their successful sports car partnership earlier that decade. However it only lasted for one season, with McLaren snatching the deal from 1995 through to 2009 when Mercedes became a full constructor once more, and I'd say they're doing pretty well.

Onyx / Heritage Formula

Onyx 193A

The car started the season with Broker sponsorship, and ran a black livery very similar to their 1993, except for silver endplates front and rear. The shape itself is a bit basic, it's recognizable enough, but at the same time it's not particularly accurate either.
Score 4/10

Onyx 193B

When De Cesaris arrived from Jordan to run for the team at the Canadian Grand Prix, his 200th race, Sauber celebrated with this one off livery. The nice livery bumps up the score from the early season version.
Score 5/10

Onyx 194B

By the French Grand Prix, the Broker logos were replaced by Tissot ones and at the German Grand Prix, this lovely livery with white spots and a large watch in front of the driver ran till the end of the season. The only thing to note is the lack of change in the shape from Onyx, as was common at that time.
Score 4/10

Minichamps

Minichamps 430940030

Minichamps released their own version of the three liveries seen that year. The shape of the car is an improvement on the Onyx shape, much closer to the real thing.
Score 6/10

Minichamps 430940129

At the Canadian Grand Prix, Sauber introduced their raised cockpit sides solution - still in bare carbon fibre at that time. Minichamps at least made an effort to add this to their model.
Score 7/10

Minichamps 430940229

Minichamps also released their updated cockpit sides with the late season livery, specifically from the German GP. However there are no further changes to the shape inline with the regulations from that part of the season. The late season Sauber also had barge boards and rounded sidepods along the top edge, rather than the indent they ran on the early season car - but again this is not reflected in this model. We also don't have a release with Lehto in the car.
Score 6/10

BBR

BBR Met13/Met26

BBR released both versions of the Sauber, with correct shapes for both parts of the season. There's a nicely built version of the late season car in this link:
https://www.racingdioramics.us/1994_Sauber.html
The BBR version, is in my opinion, the nicest of the lot.
Score 9/10

Tameo

Tameo TMK192

Tameo have also released their version of the late season shape, pictured here in the De Cesaris Canadian GP livery. The Tameo kits are always of the highest standard, but I think the BBR car just edges it for me in its resemblance to the real car.
Score 8/10

For more 1994 model reviews, please click here: https://fongugp4.blogspot.com/p/1994-model-review.html

1994: 11 Crashes that Changed F1

In a departure from my usual GP4 cars and model reviews, I wanted to write a quick article about one of the crazy aspects of the 1994 F1 season, the large number of serious crashes.

The new 1994 regulations that banned 'driver aids' was rather rushed in, and the rules were particularly ambiguous (vague), which meant that the FIA had the casting vote to rule in any specific case as to whether parts of the car were legal or not. These days, the rules tend to be better thought out, and teams can consult the FIA, Charlie Whiting in particular, as to the legality of its parts before they participate in a Grand Prix. But in 1994, it wasn't short of teams who were 'trying it on', chancing parts would be legal on the basis of the ambiguity in the rules.

The drivers, who had been used to high levels of grip from driver aids, and fat rear tyres in previous seasons, were regularly caught out by the combination of high speeds and a lack of grip of its newer models. The result is that there were a number of large crashes at the beginning of the season, that should have given the FIA warnings to make changes before there were any serious injuries. Interestingly, Senna was quoted as saying that without any changes to the speeds of the cars, it would be "a season with a lot of accidents". Unfortunately, that would be true and it would be the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna at Imola, and Karl Wendlinger's crash at Monaco that led to a host of changes to cars and tracks that began a renewed drive of improvement on safety in F1.

Frank Dernie explains that flat bottom cars are inherently unstable, and that active suspension was one of the things that helped bring stability, so by banning the system it made the cars unstable, and thus unpredictable. Aerodynamics that work fine in wind-tunnel are subjected to slides, and quick changes of directions, to roll and pitch and changes in wind and other factors that can cause loss of downforce, so when a car is so heavily dependent on its downforce, to suddenly lose it means it will cause high-speed accidents beyond the control of the driver.

I wanted to highlight the number of big accidents that happened, some lucky near-misses whilst others with memorable losses of life:

JJ Lehto - Testing at Silverstone Pre-Season

Shortly after signing for Benetton for the 1994 season, Lehto was testing on a damp Silverstone track in a 1993 car when he went off backwards at Stowe and injured his neck. The injury meant he sat out the first two Grand Prix, having yet to drive the B194. You can read more from his interview with Motorsport Magazine here:

www.motorsportmagazine.com

"[The hospital staff] said at once, ‘This is really bad, don’t move. At all.’... Two vertebrae had been completely crushed."

Martin Brundle - Brazilian Grand Prix

At the Brazilian Grand Prix, Eddie Irvine, in his Jordan, and Jos Verstappen (deputising for Lehto in the Benetton) were battling as they came to lap Eric Bernard's Ligier, along with a slowing Martin Brundle, who had an engine failure in the McLaren. Irvine chopped across the track to overtake Bernard, without taking into account Verstappen was pulling alongside. Verstappen was left with no choice but to go on the grass, and spun as they braked for the corner. Verstappen's car went airbourne and his rear tyre hit Brundle's helmet, causing it to crack. Brundle was lucky to walk away from this accident (who also had another near fatal accident in the wet at the Japanese Grand Prix later that year, not too dissimilar to Jules Bianchi's accident some 20 years later). 

Irvine was slapped with a fine and a one race ban, and after an appeal, the ban was extended to three races.

Jean Alesi - Testing at Mugello

After the Brazilian Grand Prix, Jean was testing his Ferrari 412T1 at Mugello, when he also went backwards into a barried and he also injured his neck, that caused him to miss two Grand Prix. 

Rubens Barrichello - Qualifying at San Marino Grand Prix

Rubens Barrichello had been on a roll, after finishing on the podium at the previous race in Aida. Barrichello entered the Variante Bassa some 15kph faster than the previous lap, went wide and hit the kerb on the chicane which sent the Jordan airbourne before hitting the barrier above the tyre barrier. Thankfully, this was not a fatal accident, 

Roland Ratzenberger - Qualifying at San Marino Grand Prix

A front wing flap came off from the car, causing major suspension damage, which failed at 180mph sending Roland into the barrier in a fatal crash. A photograph, linked below, sees Roland tangling with the Footwork of Fittipaldi, which may have been the cause for the failure that led to him loosing control of his car.

JJ Lehto - Start at San Marino Grand Prix

Lehto returned from his accident into the cockpit of the Benetton for the third race in Imola, but he has since admitted that he returned too soon (more in the Motorsport Magazine link above).
"When I came back I was sick and in pain; Flavio didn’t give me any testing."
Perhaps unfamiliar with the B194, the Finn stalled his car on the start as the rest of the field raced past him. All except Pedro Lamy in his Lotus who collided with the stationary Benetton, and debris, including a tyre, was sent into the crowd, injuring four spectators and a policeman. 

Ayrton Senna - San Marino Grand Prix

Senna's accident, after the safety car period to clear up the start line crash, is still a topic of debate, and the cause remains not fully known. His Williams FW16 car is seen to hit a bump at the Tamburello corner and bottom out, with sparks seen from Schumacher's onboard camera, which was unlike previous laps. Perhaps behind a slow safety car, the tyres were not up to full pressure? The car then slides, with Senna seeming to over correct and he heads for the barriers to the right. We know his steering column was hastily modified before the race and it was found to have failed, but it is not known whether it was the cause or a consequence of the accident. The end result, though, is that Senna lost his life in this accident.
A touching point was that an Austrian flag was found folded up in his cockpit, with Senna hoping to dedicate the win to Roland Ratzenberger. 

Michele Alboreto - San Marino Grand Prix

Michele Alboreto had just pitted, and back then, there was no pit-lane speed limit. His rear wing failed on his Minardi, and the accident caused his to lose a wheel which caused injuries to some of the Ferrari pitcrew. Alboreto's car came to a halt just outside of the pitlane. This incident caused the pit-lane speed limit to be introduced.

Karl Wendlinger - Practice at Monaco Grand Prix

Karl Wendlinger lost control of his Sauber C13 on the downhill approach to the chicane. The accident put Wendlinger into a coma. Sauber responded by raising the cockpit sides of the car, something that was eventually implemented on all cars for the 1996 season. 

Pedro Lamy - Testing at Silverstone

The FIA had begun to react by this stage, and a change to the diffusers were hurried into the regulations. This caused a spate of rear wing failures, with both Williams and Ligier reporting cracks on their assemblies. A rear wing failure on Lamy's Lotus caused an accident that strangely saw the car end up in the spectator tunnel at Bridge corner at Silverstone, pictured below. I've walked through this tunnel and it is small, so who knows what happened for the car to end up in there, but he managed to hit a barrier, clear a safety barrier and end up in the tunnel! Lamy's injuries to his leg would take nearly a year to recover from.

Reading Johnny Herbert's autobiography, he said he was a few hundred metres behind his teammate and as he rounded the fast left hander, all he could see was the engine and gearbox from the rear of Lamy's car strewn across the track. He looked further to see a hole in the fence, but still no sign of his car. A small flame caught his attention from the tunnel and there, Lamy was in his monocoque, partially exposed, sitting at an odd angle. 

Andrea Montermini - Practice at Spanish Grand Prix

Simtek only ran one car out of respect at the Monaco Grand Prix. Andrea Montermini, who was suffering from a virus at the time, took up the second seat for the Spanish Grand Prix, although he never made it to the Grand Prix thanks to a massive accident on the last corner of the Barcelona track in practice. Thankfully, he only had injuries to his foot and a facial wound, but yet another massive accident in a season that has already had its fair share of them. 

The aftermath

By the Monaco GP, F1 was under a lot of pressure from sponsors and manufacturers to get on top of these accidents, threatening to pull out of F1 and endangering the series altogether. It's debatable if Senna had never lost his life at Imola, whether the FIA would have felt the need to make so many changes despite the 10 other serious incidents.

A wide range of changes to the car were announced, though not all of them made it into the regulations before the end of the season, many of them phased in over the following Grand Prix. It meant that the teams at the lower end of the grid, already struggling with their finances, had to spend extra resources to simply show up and race legally. So the late season driver merry-go-round saw an influx of pay drivers racing in various seats towards the end of the season. Changes to tracks included temporary tyre barrier chicanes installed in Spain, Canada and Belgium. 

1994, perhaps unsurprisingly, saw the most driver changes of any Formula 1 season, with 46 drivers taking part at some stage over the season, that's 40 driver changes! You can read about all the changes here:

www.reddit.com

Every now and again, I test myself on quiz website Sporcle to see if I can remember all the drivers from the 1994 season, only to usually miss out on one or two:
www.sporcle.com

1/43 Model Review: 1994 Benetton B194 Ford

Background

The controversial Benetton B194 brought the team and Schumacher their first Drivers’ Championship, though they would have to wait a further year before winning their first Constructors’ Championship. With big regulation changes, mostly in the name of banning ‘driver aids’, Benetton were ahead of the game in preparing for the new rules in early 1993. And it proved a stroke of genius as other teams were caught unawares of the threat from Benetton on the championship. This car will always be remembered for alleged cheating, with traction control on the car (though “never used”), taking an element out of the refuelling rig (which led to Verstappen’s fiery pitstop) and the over-warn plank at the Belgian GP (blamed on a spin). Schumacher, though brilliant as demonstrated at the Spanish Grand Prix whilst being stuck in 5^th gear for two-thirds of the race found enough pace to finish second, had many major mistakes, including overtaking pole-sitter Hill on the warm-up lap at the British Grand Prix and ignoring the black flag, to crashing at the title-deciding Australian Grand Prix and then taking Damon Hill out with a damaged car. Schumacher had three team-mates for the year, but none of them came close to Schumacher in qualifying, often over a second a lap off his pace.

You can read a bit more about the traction control controversy and Max Mosley's thoughts on that Adelaide crash here: www.msn.com - source taken from Ibrar Malik's book, 1994 The Untold Story which you can purchase here 1994 F1 Book. 

Onyx

Onyx 204

Onyx produced a number of cars in the early 1990’s and they were cheap and cheerful. The car seemed to bear more resemblance to the B193B, and Schumacher’s helmet reversed the red and the yellow parts of the flag (presumably since Minichamps owned the rights). The car was diecast with plastic parts and it was simply but effective, but I won’t judge the car too harshly as there were worse cars from the 1994 grid produced by Onyx.

Onyx released a late season version, which had updated barge boards and the wheel rims were painted white with the blue/green stripe. They also corrected Schumacher’s helmet.
Score: 4/10

Minichamps

Michael Schumacher Collection No. 11

Minichamps 510944305

The Minichamps offering from 1994 was a much more accurate representation than the Onyx car of the same era. The shape seems to be based around the early season Brazil version which had the smaller rear wing and the large barge board, but the livery (in this version) is based on the non-tobacco French GP. Schumacher won the first 5 Grand Prix and dominated the first half of the season in this car.

Minichamps released two other liveries on the same shape…
Score: 7/10

Michael Schumacher Collection No. 12 – German GP

Minichamps 510944325

Back then, there were no shape changes to the cars for the different versions. The tail end of the 1994 season saw lots of changes to cars when mid-season regulations were brought in following the tragic events earlier in the season. At least Onyx put some new barge-boards, but Minichamps have done a nice job on the livery.
Score: 7/10

Michael Schumacher Collection No. 12 – Japanese GP (World Champion)

Minichamps 510944335

The Japanese Grand Prix version brought the increased Mild Seven blue around the barge board area and white wheels with the green stripe (though there are some versions with the black rims and a brown helmet visor). There were black decals to represent the holes that were made mandatory in the engine cover. But the front and rear wings had changed considerably since the beginning of the season.
Score: 6/10

Johnny Herbert’s Australian GP outing was also released by Minichamps, with a helmet that bore very little resemblance to the real thing.

Michael Schumacher World Champion (Monaco GP)

Minichamps 413940005

Over 20 years later, Minichamps released a couple of versions of the B194. Sadly it was only an updated version of the same 1990’s diecast mould. However it came with improved decals, new wheels and tyres, new mirrors, new driver and helmet figure and new front and rear wings with an on-board camera. This gave the car much more detail and accuracy to the Monaco GP, a weekend in which Schumacher dominated. Unfortunately, they put the wrong rims on this car.
Score: 8/10

Michael Schumacher 25^th Anniversary (World Champion/Australian GP)

Minichamps 447941605

In 2018, Minichamps finally released a resin version of the B194 in the late season configuration. With it came different versions on low production runs from the British, German, Belgian, Japanese and Australian GP, a world Champion version based on the Australian GP, as well as Mick Schumacher’s demonstration run at the 2017 Belgian GP. Oddly, the German GP rear wing seems to stick out further to the rear, and they did not create the skinny low-downforce rear wing levels. They also created a Monaco GP version, however this inaccurately portrays the diffuser. Despite my nitpicking, it is nice to receive this new model from Minichamps and to me, it is the best around at the time of writing. J.J. Lehto (Monaco GP where he finished 7th), Jos Verstappen (German GP when he was on fire & Hungary GP his 1^st podium) and Johnny Herbert (Australian GP where he retired) also get new versions.

Schumacher @ Japanese GP

Verstappen @ Hungarian GP

Verstappen @ British GP

Schumacher @ Monaco GP

Mick Schumacher @ 2017 Belgian GP

Score: 9/10

Formula 1 Car Collection / Ixo

The modern-day ‘cheap and cheerful’ version from the Formula 1 Car Collection gave us a welcomed  mid-season version of the B194 featuring correct front and rear wings and bargeboards. I believe this is based on the French GP. I think the curvature of the top of the sidepods and the rollover bar are better than the 1990’s offering from Onyx and Minichamps. The wheel rim shape is wrong, but little to complain about on this model at the price. 
Score: 7/10

Spark

Johnny Herbert Australian GP

Spark S4484

Before Minichamps released their resin model, Spark released their version. The car has lovely details, around the cockpit, the holes in the engine cover, brake ducts and also the correct version of the front and rear wings and bargeboards. For me, Spark have made the wheels a little too big and the helmets a little too small and the rear wing also sits way too high. I love the details, but I don’t think the overall proportions feel quite right.
Score: 6/10

Michael Schumacher Monaco GP

Spark S4481

I was looking forward to the Monaco GP version with the double-stacked rear wing. Unfortunately, they retro-fitted early season wings onto a late season car, so there are indents on the engine cover where there were no holes, and the diffuser is also wrong. It’s a real shame because I love the detail around the cockpit, where Schumacher ran three speedometers, and the different aerials.
Score: 5/10

BBR

BBR Met10

BBR produced this lovely version from the Brazilian Grand Prix. Because there are so few pictures of this, and I've never owned it, I'm going to refrain from giving this full marks.  
Score: 9/10

Tameo

Tameo TMK179

Tameo's early season car comes from the Spanish Grand Prix, which I've already raved about. The model is lovely, running the red number 5. My only slight nit-pick over this is that the front wing is too far forward and the barge-boards are a little too big.

Score: 8/10

Tameo TMK191

Tameo's late season version from the Australian Grand Prix was also brilliantly done. Impressive details matched with nice proportions. Same issue with the nose and the barge-boards from the Spanish GP version, but that rear wing is bang on. 

Score: 8/10

Conclusion

For me, I prefer the latest offerings from Minichamps in the 25^th Anniversary Collection in terms of the models themselves. It’s hard to pick a Grand Prix in the latter half of the year that celebrates Schumacher’s brilliance, in Australia he crashed into Damon, in Japan he finished 2^nd to an excellent drive from Hill (though it does come with wet tyres), in Belgium he was disqualified, in Germany he was doing wonders keeping up with the V12 Ferrari’s when his engine gave up, in Britain he was black flagged and disqualified. He was brilliant in Monaco, but I can’t help looking at the mistakes once I know that they are there.

For more 1994 Model Reviews, click here: https://fongugp4.blogspot.com/p/1994-model-review.html
This is also featured in the World Champions Model Reviews, for more click here: https://fongugp4.blogspot.com/p/f1-world-champions.html