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.

1/43 Model Review: 1996 Tyrrell 024 Yamaha

Background

The Tyrrell 024 was designed by Harvey Postlethwaite and retained drivers Ukyo Katayama and Mika Salo. The car was a good improvement on the previous chassis, but the engine was underpowered and unreliable. Mika Salo lead the team with thee points finishes in the early part of the season on the way to earning the team an eighth placed finish in the Constructors' Championship.

Personally, it was one of the nicer shapes and liverys from the 1996 season, though I preferred the end of season livery with increased tobacco livery and Korean Air on the sidepods. It's a shame there isn't that livery version released, but I still like the early season livery.

Onyx

Onyx 276

This model has already featured in the Forti review, but scored low marks because it's nothing like the FG03. But as a Tyrrell as it was originally intended gets a much better score. Generally, a nice shape, although the sidepod is not quite long enough. I'm a little disappointed the by fonts they have chosen for their logos, they're just not quite right. 

Score: 6/10

Minichamps

Minichamps 430960019

Minichamps 430960018

The Minichamps version is of a better quality, but that's not to knock the improvement from Onyx for their 1996 cars. Their version includes the suspension covers on the front and rear upper wishbones, although by the time they started running them, they had stopped running with the main barge boards. The rims are a nice detail with the four spoke Fondmetal tyres. 

Score: 7/10

Tameo

Tameo TMK223

This Tameo kit is from the early season Argentine GP. 

Tameo TMK217

There is also this version from the German GP. In practice, the team attempted to run four front tyres, presumably to reduce the drag on the long straights on the Old Hockenheim circuit. The car has the aero covers on the front and rear upper suspension arms, unique to Tyrrell's 024 car. This is a brilliant reproduction of the 024.
Score: 10/10

BBR

BBR BG100

This model by BBR is from the opening Brazilian GP. Although it's got nice details, the nose is a bit too long which makes the front wing sit too far forward. The rear wing also sits too low and a little too far back. These two things combined makes the car look worse than it is. 
Score: 6/10


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

1/43 Model Review: 1996 Forti FG03 Ford

Background

Forti joined Formula 1 largely due to backing from Pedro Diniz's family, but when Diniz left after the first year and took his sponsorship with him, the team struggled with finances. Already having a particularly uncompetitive car, condemned to the rear of the grid in 1995, the 1996 saw new rules introduced where cars must qualify within 107% of the pole position time. Basically the rule was brought in because the Forti cars were so slow and getting lapped so often during Grand Prix.

The lack of finances meant they ran an upgraded version of their 1995 car, the FG01B, for the first few races. One FG03 was ready for Imola and qualified comfortably within the 107% limit and 0.7s behind the next fastest car. Prior to the Spanish GP, a deal was done to sell the team to Shannon Racing, and the car turned Green, losing the yellow and blue colour that ran in memory of Ayrton Senna. But the money never materialised, the car, though having promising pace, retired with poor reliability, and as debts to Cosworth rose, there were no new engines to run.

At the British GP, they only managed a couple of laps in practice, in Germany, the cars remained unassembled in the garage with no engines. The team decided to bow out of the sport, whilst a court case was in progress over who owned the team. Eventually, Shannon Racing won the case in September, but Forti had already left F1. Both entities folded from any further racing activities.

Onyx

Onyx 288

Sadly only Onyx have produced any Forti models, there's not even one of the 1995 car. Even worse, they didn't even bother creating the shape either, it's a rehashed Tyrrell 024 (see Tyrrell below for comparison)! Fans of Formula 1 from the 90's will inevitably be fans of the underdog teams, and I'm no exception, so I would really love a proper Forti model.

Onyx 290

At least we get both liveries of the Forti. In fact the yellow livery evolved through the year, earning a green stripe when the Shannon Racing was first announced, before donning the green, white and red livery for a couple of races before their demise. Sadly no bright green rims on these cars.

Onyx 276

So to the score, it's a case of is it better to have something that's not great, or to have nothing at all. I gave it a 2, because it could be worse, but there's much to be improved on.
Score: 2/10

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