GP4: 1996 Ligier JS43 walkaround part 3

Welcome back to the third installment of the Ligier JS43 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's Tyrrell 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.

Below are some shots of the car in GP4.

GP4: 1996 Ligier JS43 walkaround part 2

This is the second post on the 1996 Ligier JS43 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 Benetton B196, which is perfect for the Ligier JS43, 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.

GP4: 1996 Ligier JS43 walkaround part 1

The next car to feature in my GP4 walkarounds is the 1996 Ligier JS43, 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 Benetton B196. 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. 

Again, here is the car in rfactor 2.