GP4: 1996 Footwork Arrows FA17 walkaround part 3

This is part 3 of my walkaround, as we begin to look at some of the details of this 1996 Footwork Arrows FA17 shaped by me, with Soulbringer, Kedy89 and AUS_Doug all helping to compelte this car. This car forms part of the 1996 mod for GP4, and has subsequently been converted to other games such as rFactor 2 and Assetto Corsa.

Footwork ran quite a rounded sidepod. Look at the bottom of the sidepod inlet, how it is rounded to let the air under the sidepod. The gradient then becomes more square as you get the join with the floor at the rear, and again I wanted to merge the sidepod smoothly with the floor which a nicely rounded. The sidepods show an undercut or sorts. The top of the sidepod shape was not flat, infact the contours at the bottom of the cockpit side protection and the top of the sidepod are not the same. So the top the sidepod has a different cross section as you progress from the front to the rear. This wasn't easy to get right and also to get the normals to look natural here was tricky too. 

As mentioned previously, I'm happy with how the rollover hoop merges smoothly onto the engine cover section, again this was an area I wanted to perfect in my modelling. The rear wing is quite standard, with Footwork being one of very few teams to colour the inside of the rear wing endplates. 

Here's a wireframe shot of the rear of the car, just to show some of the contours and details of the rear that would otherwise be missed. Again there weren't too many shots of this area of the car, but I like how it turned out. There was a big fat exhaust at the back, but there's no fancy blown diffuser on this car. You can see how the sidepod cooling outlet at the top separates that flow from the exhaust. The diffuser is nothing special again other than the kink along the top of the central section. 

Finally, here's a quick view of the internals of the car. I wanted to get some of the larger parts of the pipes and other larger details in there to give some interest, some of this more close to the 1997 car which I could find some internal photos of. 

Well that's it for the Footwork FA17 walkaround, and indeed the 1996 walkaround of my cars. I hope you guys enjoyed it, look out for more insights into my more recent work. 

GP4: 1996 Footwork Arrows FA17 walkaround part 2

This is part 2 of my walkaround, as we begin to look at some of the details of this 1996 Footwork Arrows FA17 shaped by me, with Soulbringer, Kedy89 and AUS_Doug all helping to compelte this car. This car forms part of the 1996 mod for GP4, and has subsequently been converted to other games such as rFactor 2 and Assetto Corsa.

Footwork ran quite a bulky nose cone and monocoque section. The front wing supports are slightly angled back, and the front wing endplates are looking to generate an outwash effect, whilst most the other teams were looking to direct the air towards the inside of the front tyre. 

Footwork also ran a small barge board in the front suspension, looking to stop any turbulent air from the front wheels from disrupting the flow under the nose. I've shown the wireframe in the shot above, again you can see how I put lots of rows of polygons to get the right normals. You can see the body lines too have lots of rows of polygons too. The top of the cockpit, above the driver's legs, is almost indented. 

The main barge board is quite small in comparison, very similar to the one it ran the previous year. Behind that and Footwork are trying to maximise the undercut at the bottom of the cockpit section, an Adrian Newey concept from his March days. 

I was in the routine to creating unique cockpit dashboards at that time, though this was quite primitive back then. I'm glad that Kedy has brought some colour to the buttons. You can see the odd indent on the top of the cockpit clearer from this angle, presumably encouraging the air downwards towards the sidepods and under the car. 

Footwork also ran remarkably high cockpit side protection. These were not always easy to get right, but I enjoyed getting this to look smooth and seamless and the reflections look good off it too. The head rest behind the driver, usually I wouldn't join it to the main shape, but here I went the extra mile and blended it in. I've also included the hole on the top of the rollover bar, this was for the cranes to wrap around the rollover bar so that it could be easily craned away. 

That's it for this post, more to come soon. 

GP4: 1996 Footwork Arrows FA17 walkaround part 1

This Footwork Arrows car would be my final contribution to the 1996 mod and in theory the shape that bests represents my modelling techniques that I have picked up along the way at that time. Credits go to Soulbringer for mapping, Kedy89 for the textures and I believe AUS_Doug was involved with the shadows. 

I was really pleased with how this car turned out, on the shape side on my part, and also on the rest of the work to bring it to completion, the early season Footwork livery being my preferred livery before TWR brought Power Horse sponsorship with him and a new livery for the car. 

I'd learnt by now how to proportion the car, making sure the dimensions match the other 1996 cars in terms of width and height in particular. A bug bear of mine from the early days when multiple car shapers were active, there was not much consistency in that regard, so I wanted to make sure that for the 1996 cars they were consistent throughout. 

There weren't, at that time, many good photographs of the rear and the internals, so there was a bit of artistic license employed if I remember correctly. I really wanted to make this car as smooth as possible, and I was perfecting my normals management, that's probably most evident where the rollover bar attaches to the side head protection/engine cover. 

It's been a long time since I wrote one of these, but this is the final one of my cars from 1996, so I look forward to enjoying the detail with you over the next couple of blog posts. 

In the meantime, here's a video of a converted version of the car in rFactor2. 

1/43 Model Review: 1996 Footwork/Arrows FA17 Hart

Background

Jackie Oliver sold the Footwork team to Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR), and hired Jos Verstappen and promoted Ricardo Rosset from F3000. Walkinshaw threw all his effort quickly into the 1997 season, using the FA17 car as a test car for Bridgestone who would debut in 1997. The car was fairly competitive at the start of the year in the hands of Verstappen who finished 6th in Argentina, but reliability was poor. The team finished 9th in the Constructors' Championship and would compete as Arrows the following year.

Onyx

Onyx 284

Onyx 286

Onyx made the Footwork Arrows with Riccardo Rosset, but did not have the rights to produce Verstappen's helmet, so they released it with a red helmet driven by 'Dutch driver'. The model itself is not bad compared to previous Onyx models, coming in both the early season Footwork livery and the amended TWR livery. The proportions of each element of the car is nicely done, but is perhaps a bit let down by the slightly wonky finish - quality control perhaps not being Onyx's strong points and its variable as to how well your model is put together.
Score: 7/10

BBR

BBR Met60

The BBR version is quite rare to find and there are not too many photos online. Again it comes in two versions, from the Australian GP (although the one pictures has been converted to a later GP) and the San Marino GP where they ran the red and blue car. This is a nice model from BBR, as you would expect from them.
Score: 9/10


To read more from the 1996 season, click here: https://fongugp4.blogspot.com/p/1996-model-review.html

1/43 Model Review: 1998 X Wings (Tower Wings)

In 1997, Tyrrell pioneered the tower wing, commonly known as the X Wing, because of the angle of the support struts when viewed from the front. Though this would be the final Tyrrell with Ken Tyrrell at the helm before being bought by British American Tobacco (soon to be called BAR), Harvey Postlethwaite still came  out with some unique design features on a shoestring budget, for example the nose along with the nose wings, and the skinny rear end, refined from the previous couple of cars. Looking to make use of every area in the rules to look for more grip, the side of the driver's head allowed for wings to be run. In fact the 1997 version was made from cut up bits of old front wings! You can read a bit more about it here: www.racefans.net

Minichamps 430970018

Tyrrell were the only team to run with the X Wing for the 1997 season and they continued with it on their 1998 car.

Minichamps 430980050

Soon, other teams started to adopt their over versions onto their cars. Sauber's solution looks particularly clumsy. Indeed one of theirs was knocked off in the pitlane by one of the air lines.

Minichamps 430980045

Prost's version was a bit more elegant with a curved support. What was unique about Prost's solution was that they only ran it on one side of the car because it got in the way of refueling (the Minichamps car having it on both sides), owing to their sidepods beginning further back.

Minichamps 430980041

Ferrari were the only top team to adopt the X Wing, and with such a huge support, it was probably the most intrusive and ugly.

Minichamps 510984333

Jordan's version was perhaps the most elegant of the lot, not that they looked good at all. I mean it's like looking at a stool chart and picking your favourite.

Add caption

Most of the objection and outcry at the time was how bad they looked, but the FIA couldn't ban them because of aesthetics. It was bad enough we had to get used to skinny cars, smaller wings and grooved tyres, and these were just a step too far. So it was after round 3 at Imola, when the Sauber one got knocked off, that they were eventually banned on safety grounds.

Minichamps, as you can see above, produced versions from each of the cars and are fairly hard to find, which pushes the price up a little. I got them all as a point of interest, but quickly sold them because they are dreadful to look at.