GP4: 1993 Tyrrell 021 Yamaha v1.1 update

Apologies, no new screenshots, but I have updated the pack to include track specific textures. Though the car appeared at the British GP, it wasn't used in the race, but the textures are there. This includes the non-tabacco version of the Cabin logos, with 'Challenge Spirit' in place of the AB. 

In Germany, the Autodesk logo disappears for the rest of the season. I also made the Tyrrell logos on the rear wing a bit smaller to give the impression of a low downforce setup. 

The Hungarian GP is the standard livery with Cabin logos, if you wanted to choose one. 

The Italian GP is just the Cabin version of the German GP. 

At Suzuka, they changed the Tyrrell logos on the sidepod to just a large Club Angle logo. The front wing also sports the Cibie logos. 

And finally, the Australian GP version retains the Club Angle logos on the sidepod, but gone are the Cibie logos. 

Unfortunately I spotted too late that only Katayama ran Bburago logos on the rear wing, whilst De Cesaris did not, I didn't have the time to remap it and I didn't have space on the main texture to put it. Anyway, all of this blurb is a reminder to me just in case I need to put these textures together again! 

Download

GP4: 1993 Tyrrell 021 Yamaha Download

 

Here it is, the 1993 Tyrrell 021 Yamaha, fully painted and optimised for GP4 and available for download. 

The car was introduced from the British GP, though only fully used from the German GP and used for the remainder of the season by Ukyo Katayama and Andrea De Cesaris. Unfortunately the car, designed by Mike Coughlan, did not yield any points. 

GP4: 1993 Tyrrell 021 Yamaha final WIP

Today I bring an end to a 10 year old project, my 1993 Tyrrell 021 Yamaha. The shape has long been created and has been available as an open source file since, but nobody had taken it up. Well I finally mapped it earlier this year, and I did have a painter lined up, but unfortunately he was busy with other projects, which is fine. 

So I decided I would paint it. Having been painting several helmets and also the 2021 Williams, I had much more confidence going back to a mid-90s car. The livery is quite basic, the lines quite simple, and not many logos to search for. I decided to go for brighter colours, as it would have been in real life, but would have come across much duller on TV at the time. 

I spent a bit more time on some of the detailing, using a mix of photo samples mixed in with my own painting. The front wing for example has an almost scratched metal texture to the real car, so that's worked into the texture if you looked close enough. 

The dashboard was quite fun to recreate, though it was pretty basic compared to some of the cockpits I've been doing for 1994, but the textures help lift the low poly shapes quite nicely. I use an ambient occlusion baked shadows in Blender to create the shapes from the shape direct, and I kept them for the cockpit, so there's a bit more shadow in there than normal, I quite like the effect. 

The driver body texture I created from scratch. Renault ran a driver suit competition not so long ago and posted a white template that was perfect for using as a template for my driver. The white stitching is hand drawn, the logos have a slight fabric texture applied over them, and the baked shadows from Blender make it look very realistic, despite my old basic blocky shape, I'm really please with how that's turned out. 

I spent a bit of time on the damage model, again I didn't want to spend too much time on it, but there's enough there to make it interesting. Tyrrell ran one spring on the rear suspension tilted up at an angle. They also ran a reflective light metal floor, which I wanted to include, but I couldn't make it too bright as you'd see it from the back of the car. 

Much of the modern cars are running matte liveries, so there's not much reflection and shine on them, so it was nice to go back to the 1990s and have a lighter alpha channel to work with. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the overall car. I could have gone back to the shape and made some more amendments but I would most likely have recreated the whole car again, I had to say this is fine as it is. 

I think it looks good in GP4, testing it on various tracks with different lighting and reflections. Apologies that I'm running this car in my test setup in GP4, so it's got Katayama driving in De Cesaris' car. Anyway, it's nice to bring the 1993 mod nearer to completion with this car, the download will be available very soon. 

GP4: 1993 Tyrrell 021 Yamaha WIP (mapped)

I realised that I haven't posted any pictures of the 1993 Tyrrell 021 car since those basic zmodeler shots from 2011. I've dusted it off and mapped it a few months back. Here is the car in GP4, with a plain livery.

I'm quite pleased with how this car holds up, because it was quite a low poly car, so it could have looked a little boxy, but I think it looks good. 

Working on this car has given me some motivation to begin work on the 1994 car. Though there are similarities, there's actually very little I can actually recycle from this car. 

Here's the car in the middle of the 1994 grid, but a shot from the cockpit. It's not particularly high detailed for modern day standards, but for GP4 external view, I think it looks OK and a good basis for some nice textures to bring it to life a bit more. 

1/43 Model Review: 1997 Tyrrell 025 Ford

Background

The Tyrrell 025 is an evolution of the previous car, but now carries the Ford engines, having ditched the Yamaha engines. Sadly the V8’s lacked the power to keep up with its rivals, despite having good drivers and a well balanced chassis. The San-Marino GP saw the innovation of the “Tower Wings” or X-Wings, which came up out of the sidepod by the side of the driver to generate downforce. These were adopted in the early part of the 1998 season by many other teams before the FIA banned the technology. This is also the last Tyrrell GP car to score a point before it was sold at the end of the 1998 season.

I personally like the majority of the 1997 grid for its shapes and liveries. I like the Tyrrell for it's simplicity, it's white with black trim looks good, the shape is smooth and simple. The nose is just an extended version of the nose that Ferrari ran at the beginning of 1996, just pushing the nose higher. However, even with this concept, you lose the downforce generation of the central part of the front wing. Simple bargeboards hidden within the suspension and tiny small sidepods, and shrink wrapped gearbox have been features of Tyrrells going back to 1995.

Minichamps

Minichamps 430970018

The Minichamps car comes in two editions, one from the San Marino GP which features the X-Wing and nose winglets as well.

Minichamps 430970019

The standard car looks quite bare without all the additional wings, but again I like the simplicity of the livery and the elegent shape. The model is nicely done, good proportions, Minichamps were improving their models and were consistently pumping out some nice models in 1997. 

Score: 7/10

Onyx

Onyx X305

You can get a few extra versions from Onyx of the Tyrrell 025, but sadly the base shape isn't particularly great, despite the relatively simple shape of the car. Above is the San Marino GP model.

Onyx X301S

Then we have the Monaco GP model, which has even more winglets around the rear wheels.

Onyx X301

At the lower downforce track in Montreal, we get a more basic version from the Canadian GP. The model struggles with odd proportions, the shape kind of if you were to really squint somewhat resembles the real car, but it just looks like it was a quick job with not much effort into making it look realistic.
Score: 5/10

Tameo

Tameo - TMK239

From Tameo, we get the Argentine GP version from the beginning of the season. This is another brilliant model from Tameo, fantastic proportions and great details. They have the extra elements on the rear wing, the additional flat floor on the leading edge of the sidepods, the holes in the sidepod and around the rear suspension are nice touches, good detail on the fuel cap and cockpit as always, and all the additional winglets are nicely sculpted too. A brilliant model if you can afford it.

Score: 10/10

1/43 Model Review: 1969 Matra MS10 Jackie Stewart Review (Spark)

Background

Jackie Stewart won his first of three World Championships for Matra International, a non-works team ran by Ken Tyrrell. The opening race was won in the MS10 which had already earned three victories in 1968 and won in South Africa in 1969. For the majority of the rest of the year, the MS80 was used. The MS80 ran with the fuel tank to the sides of the driver in sidepods. High mounted wings were banned early in the season due to safety concerns. Stewart won 5 GPs in the MS80, and the Matra is the only car, other than Ferrari, to have won a Championship having not been built in the UK. Jacky Ickx was competitive in the second half of the year in the Brabham, substituting for an injured Jack Brabham, but Stewart's points tally was too much to overcome.

The MS84 was Matra's attempt at 4 Wheel Drive, but Stewart never raced it as it was overweight and difficult to handle. 

Spark S7183

I'm aiming to have owned a World Championship car for every Formula 1 Season, but the 1969 car had always been a Quartzo car of the MS80. Spark have released the Matra MS10, albeit the old car used only for the first race of the season, but I wanted to tick that off my wish list. 

I was really happy with the model when I received it, it was much more impressive than I expected. Another thing I always wanted a model of was with the early and primitive wings, bolted high over the car, directly onto the suspension. 

The cars proportions are nicely recreated, though it isn't the most complex of shapes overall, but it's all the attention to detail that I love about it, from the rivot joints, to the piping along the bottom of the car, it just all makes this a really nice model.

The mirrors are not an after-thought, but carefully modelled with a nice chrome paint. The driver figure is nice, and for a change, I really like the Spark helmet. It's a half helmet with a 3D transparent visor, with Stewart's face under a balaclava nicely modelled. 

Another shot into the cockpit shows a nice steering wheel and dashboard, as well as a good windshield and nicely shaped monocoque.

Moving onto the engine and you can see the detail of the pistons are individually made, twisting around metal rods. Then engine is clearly defined and the cylinder covers look great.

The Cosworth DFV engine from another perspective shows some nice modelling. The extra wing supports is a nice touch.

The rear exhaust area is nicely done, with the red cylinder attached at the top. There's nice detail on the main driveshaft and it all looks fantastic to me.

There's care and attention to detail all over this car, with the wing supports showing nice detail. 

Score: 9/10

GP4: 1996 Tyrrell 024 walkaround part 3

This part 3 of my walkaround as we begin to look at some of the details of the 1996 Tyrrell 024 shaped by me, mapped by Soulbringer and painted by Kedy89.

The chassis was quite a reasonable chassis, but the Yamaha engine was under powered and it was not particularly reliable.

Here is a shot of the rear of the cockpit, the side head protection and the rollover bar/engine cover. In terms of modelling, it's one of my favourites in terms of getting the shape and proportions correct, as well as getting flat surfaces merged by smooth curved normals. Essentially, how the light reflects off the body of the car around this region is 'natural'.

Here is a wireframe shot of the front of the sidepods. It's not always the easiest to join the sidepod onto the main body of the car. The top of the sidepod joins to the side of the cockpit and it's not easy to get good looking normals here. Then as the sidepod curves around it joins to the floor at the bottom. You have to watch the curve on the floor is in line with the curve on the top of the sidepod from the top-down view, as the regulations state that from underneath the car, you shouldn't be able to see any bodywork.

Moving to the rear of the sidepods, and there is a small undercut, and a lip on the top. The shape of the top of the sidepod is quite curved, essentially to try and make it as much like a wing as possible. You can see how it is more of a bump than a smooth curve.

Looking from the top down at the rear of the engine cover, you can see the lip and how it works with the winglet. Like the 1995 car, the gearbox housing is quite small, with this bulge at the rear to house it. In terms of managing normals, you have the top of the sidepod, the remains of the side head protection, the rollover bar and the bump all to integrate neatly together. You can see where I've put lots of parallel polies to try and make sure the normals of one part doesn't effect the normals on the others.

From here you can see that the rear suspension also has it's unique coverings, working with the rear of the engine cover to work with the diffuser. It's not new, with the Ligier and Benetton having similar solutions in 1996 and previous years.

The rear of the Tyrrell is quite neat and simple, compared to some of the other 1996 contenders at least. At the time, I always liked the look of the double pylons supporting the upper rear wing.

Looking at the internals of the car, Kedy89 has done a nice job with the textures. I was experimenting with the engine cylinders at the time, of the midfield teams they were all unique, and you can see how bulky the Yamaha ones were. I didn't want to throw too many polygons at it at the time, but if I was to revisit it, I would probably be a bit more generous to make it look a bit smoother.

I didn't want to go overboard with detail at the rear of the car, but enough to make it interesting and the main parts of the rear suspension, the gearbox housing and the engines and radiators being included.

I found a video of a conversion of the car straight into F1C to compare with previous posts.

And a video I found of my car in its native GP4.

GP4: 1996 Tyrrell 024 walkaround part 2

This part 2 of my walkaround as we begin to look at some of the details of the 1996 Tyrrell 024 shaped by me, mapped by Soulbringer and painted by Kedy89.

The model post can be found here: https://fongugp4.blogspot.com/2019/03/143-model-review-1996-tyrrell-024-yamaha.html

The front wing endplate is quite a standard version on the 1996 grid. The front wing supports are the widest ones on the grid. After pioneering the high nose, the Tyrrell team had returned to a low nose solution for several years, but they developed this nicely sleek nose and monocoque for 1996.

There's a slight bump on the top of the monocoque where the nose cone joins to the main chassis. The team started the season with a normal barge board just in front of the sidepods, but developed a smaller version just behind the front wing to work in conjunction with the upper suspension housing.

Here is a wireframe shot of the front of this car. The underside of the monocoque narrows as it reaches the floor.

Here is a shot of the cockpit from the drivers point of view. Kedy89 has done a nice job with the textures, highlighting some of the 3D details of the cockpit. I wonder why they put the aerial off centre, I don't know if that is more distracting or less distracting than if it was central.


I managed to find this conversion to Automoblista. At least for this one, putting on the early season suspension they amended the textures and removed the shadow. But there are things that you can tell are signs that it's my car with some updates, like my low-poly aerials and mirrors from the cockpit view.

GP4: 1996 Tyrrell 024 walkaround part 1

The 1996 Tyrrell 024 was probably one of my favourite looking cars from 1996. It was a little sad to see so few sponsors on the mostly white car, but I did enjoy the Japanese GP livery in particular with the increased tobacco advertising. It gave me a particular impetus to make this car as nice as I could make it, little did I know at the time that it would be one of my last cars I would create for the 1996 mod.

This car, like the Ligier, was mapped by Soulbringer and painted by Kedy89 and I am truly appreciative that these great artists were able to help out on one of my cars, I'm really pleased with the end result of this car.

Harvey Postlethwaite, the team's head designer, was churning out some interesting designs and ideas for the cash-strapped team, from innovating the high noses in 1990, to swapping the front and rear wheels in Hockenheim practice 1995, to the X-wings in 1997.

The 1995 car had a particularly small rear end, and that concept is further refined in the 1996 car. The sidepod concept had changed from the 1995 car, with the upper element being quite curved, which wasn't easy to get right. Most of the sidepods you see are usually flat rather than slightly tapered, being lower on the outer edges and higher when it meets the engine cover.

One of the stand out things that appeared on the Tyrrell 024 mid-season was the suspension coverings over the top wishbones, both front and rear. The concept remains unique to this car, not being seen on any other car since.

With the car being mostly white in the early part of the season, it was important to make the car as smooth as possible, as any blemishes will show up more obviously. In fact in the shot above, the top of the sidepods just under the winglets show a couple of shadows that are a result of me not quite having the time to fix it. But looking at the smoothness of the engine cover and the side head protection, that's an area that I'm quite pleased with from a normals perspective.

If I remember correctly, the 1993 Tyrrell was already mostly completed by the time I started out on this car, so it was interesting when I got to the internal parts whether there were any transferable parts, mostly using it as a reference for places where I did not have particularly good photos of. In the end, I think the 1997 car was being used in the BOSS series and there were some good shots of the internals from that car, so that was what I used as a reference for this car mainly.

Once again, here is a clip of ta converted version of my car going around Monaco in rFactor 2. What's interesting to me about this conversion is that they put the normal suspension on, but they didn't take away the shadow from the textures.

2019 Preview: Historic Team Names

They say its easier to buy an existing company than start up your own. Only a handful of teams are Ferrari, McLaren, Haas and Williams (though you could argue it is Williams version 2.0 (version 1.0 being bought out by Wolf (not Toto Wolff (though he did own a bit of Williams V2 at one stage) but Walter Wolf)) phew!).

Two teams have changed hands once Toro Rosso used to be Minardi, and Alfa Romeo used to be Sauber (with a few years as BMW, but they still retained the Sauber name).

However there are four teams that have a more colourful history.

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Team Silverstone

Jordan

>>>

Jordan started the team from 1991 having run various lower formulae teams. When a contract dispute with Vodafone didn't go his way and Honda deciding to pair with BAR, the team quickly ran into money problems and went to the back of the grid. 2005 was the final season under the Jordan name.

Midland F1

In 2006, for the most part, it competed as Midland F1. Except they didn't make it all the way through the season.

Spyker

>>>

Spyker quickly reliveried the car from the Italian GP, but thankfully we had a much toned down version in 2007.

Force India

>>>

From 2008, Vijay Mallya bought the team and it was then known as Force India right through to 2018, well the middle of 2018 when it became...

Racing Point

So apparently the point is a full stop. With the title sponsor, the team is then "SportPesa Racing ."
It's like a joke that you have to explain isn't funny, I get its trying to be clever but I suppose I preferred they didn't revive the Lola name when they had nothing to do with them. The best 'pound-for-pound' team will receive a cash boost with this latest change of ownership and they will be looking to regain 4th in the Constructors' Championship.

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Team Enstone

Toleman

Toleman competed between 1981 through to 1985. I only had two Tolemans in my collection, this one with Senna driving.

Benetton

>>>

The clothing company, Benetton, bought the team and introduced its bright colours to the grid. Winning two championships with Schumacher in the mid-90s, the team would eventually sell up in 2001 to Renault.

Renault

>>>

Renault also won two championships with Fernando Alonso. Renault left the sport at the end of 2010, with the team being bought by Genii capital.

Lotus

>>>

They called the team Lotus, even though there was another team called Lotus because they correctly bought the rights, but Proton who owned actual Lotus wanted this team to be called Lotus. Lotus (the other team) became Caterham and Renault transitioned from Lotus Renault to Lotus...

Renault

... and back to Renault again when the manufacturer saved the team from a dire financial situation towards the end of the 2015 season. Renault will be looking to catch the leading three teams in the coming couple of years. This season they will want to be a clear 4th, but that seems like it is not going to be an easy task.

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Team Braxley

Tyrrell

>>>

Ken Tyrrell ran Matra cars from 1968, before making his own cars and entering as Tyrrell in 1970. The team were successful in the early 70s, but their competitiveness began to wane, until they were eventually sold to British American Tobacco when they had sunk to the back of the grid in 1998.

BAR

>>>

BAR told us they would win their first Grand Prix. They didn't even score a point all 1999. They wanted to run two seperate liveries, but ended up with the two sides of the car in different liveries. So I'm posting a picture of their much better testing livery. Consistent podium finishes in 2004 saw the team bought by Honda in 2005.

Honda

>>>

The team became Honda in 2006, but the team slipped backwards in competitiveness. It wasn't until 2009 that they would produce a competitive car, but Honda were suffering in the recession and pulled out of the sport at the end of 2008.

Brawn GP

For one glorious season, we had Brawn GP. From the brinks of closing down, this team won it all in 2009 before being bought out by Mercedes.

Mercedes

In 2010, with Rosberg and Schumacher at the wheel, Mercedes began their F1 come-back which has so far seen them win 5 Championships in a row to date. Will they make it a sixth straight year? It looks like they have their biggest fight yet going into 2019.

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Team Milton Keynes

Stewart

>>>

Jackie and son Paul Stewart entered a Fords works backed team in 1997. They made good progress, producing a quick but slightly fragile car in 1999. They won their first Grand Prix that season, by which time Ford wanted to buy him out. 

Jaguar

>>>

And Ford called the team Jaguar and brought a welcome green livery back to F1. Unfortunately the team never enjoyed any success and Ford sold out to a drinks company. 

Red Bull Racing

Red Bull made slow initial progress, and the arrival of Adrian Newey did not see much of a boost initially. But with new regulations in 2009, Newey and his team worked with Renault to produce some competitive cars, winning four straight championships. In 2019, a new era with Honda engines promises a return to the front in the near future. How soon can they start competing for championships again is the big question.