The first version of the 2026 Grand Prix 4 Mod is finally here!
First and foremost, I'd like to thank all of the original authors whose work has made this release possible. My role has largely been to compile, adapt, and bring everything together into a complete package.
This release features the full 2026 Formula One grid, with cars created by Excalibur and Isaint. I was also pleased to contribute by creating several of this year's cars myself. The Cadillac livery has been revised and is now much closer to the real-world design than the version included in the initial release. This release also introduces special liveries for used in the early season Grands Prix:
Japanese Grand Prix – Mercedes, Racing Bulls and Haas special liveries.
Miami Grand Prix – Racing Bulls, Alpine, and Cadillac special liveries.
These are included alongside the standard 2026 season liveries
The 2026 helmet set has been built on Theofilos' excellent RHP helmet templates, along with Jvinu's Schuberth and Stilo templates. I'm grateful to both of them for providing such a solid foundation on which to paint my own helmets.
Many thanks also go to Excalibur for the updated tyres and the new 3D wheel rims, which add another level of authenticity to the cars.
As with previous releases, this mod benefits enormously from Öggo's GP4++, which brings a wealth of graphical and gameplay enhancements. The flashing lights in particular look fantastic. I've also included gplaps' z-buffer fix. While this feature is now available within GP4++, it is configured here to work alongside crosire's DirectX 9 patch for the best compatibility.
Thanks again to Öggo for making individual cockpit shapes possible. This allowed me to convert cockpit interiors directly from each car, and this release includes the new Aston Martin internal steering wheel.
As always, a huge thank you to Gitanes for his outstanding performance files and physics, which continue to provide an excellent driving experience.
I'm also grateful to Mailson Teles for sharing his updated 2026 TV graphics package, which introduces several exciting new features.
The sound package included in this release is the excellent 2025 Red Bull Honda set by jcgrj.
There are many more contributors who deserve recognition, and a full list of credits is included with the mod. Without the work of the entire GP4 community, this project would be a shadow of what it is.
For a number of reasons, I've had to scale back my modding over the past few months, so I apologise that this release has taken longer than I had hoped. My original plan was to include several additional features and improvements, but unfortunately time simply didn't allow me to complete everything in time for this first release.
As with last year's mod, there is also a non-CSM version which is available too.
I hope you enjoy the mod, and thank you all for your continued support of the Grand Prix 4 community.
I am proud to release to you the 2025 mod as a non-CSM, stand-alone version, the first mod to be released using GP4 Memory Access.
Like the CSM mod, this is a little bit proof-of-concept than a full blown complete mod. This mod shows a working example of how to use GP4 Memory Access by Carl_gpgames and Öggo.
I've spent less time creating content and more time in exploring new features to present to you - hoping that other authors may be able to fill in some of the gaps.
All of the content is already compiled in the CSM version of the mod: 2025 CSM Mod
This has no tracks included, no driver changes, no additional liveries and no special helmets - it's just a generic base 2025 mod.
What is new to this mod, and will soon be added to the CSM version, are the 2025 TV graphics by Mailson Teles.
It's here and ready - the 2025 CSM mod has just dropped.
As with my previous 2023/24 season mods, this mod is the base mod with everything working smoothly. So it is a kind of work in progress release, designed with future add-ons in mind.
The mods that I have released this year have been redesigned to make use of Öggos' InjectDLL and bringing new features to current season mods. Whilst the structure has many similarities to the previous seasons, it has significant changes means this is a completely new mod.
Much of the content in this mod has been released here: https://fongugp4.blogspot.com/p/gp4-2025-download-sources.html
All the cars have been brought to us by the RSCT team of Excalibur and Isaint. I have modified Isaint's cars a little, mostly bug fixes to stop the flickering textures and I have repositioned some of the rear wheel hubs to be more realistic.
I have also taken all these cars and created them for internal cockpit use. This is a new feature, and with the dashes on the wheel instead of the cockpit shape, it makes for a much easier conversion. Because these cockpits use the main texture, track specific liveries work seamlessly without any additional editing.
Also new, to go with the individual cockpits, are steering wheels for each team. They are based on the 2024 versions and both internal and external versions of these wheels are in the game. As it remains a limitation to run one steering wheel for all teams, you simply need to select a driver from the CSM menu to use that team's steering wheel.
Thanks again to Excalibur for his excellent 3D rims, however I have amended the size of them and created lods, as in previous seasons with Carl_gpgames.
Thanks once more to Gitanes for his work on performance files, including torque files, physics and magic data files for each track. The magic data, as in previous mods, is a little experimental, it does depend on how you install your tracks and the TSM profile name you use. I have added an option to turn the torque tweak off, this occassionaly makes cars sit in their pitbox for a good while before the mechanics start work - it is not a foolproof fix though.
Thanks to Mailson_Teles for his lovely loading screens and to jcgrj for the 2024 engine sounds.
I will talk about the new helmets in their own dedicated post, but I'm indebted to Theofilos for creating and sharing his Real Helmets Project. So far only the Arai and Bell helmet variations have been done, a very nice upgrade from before. Thanks to Excalibur for help in the conversion. Instead of waiting for the set to be complete, I have quickly painted some Schuberth and Stilo helmets on Jvinu's shape for the time being. These temporary helmets are not as accurate as the main set.
To get this mod released, I had to rush to put some generic items in, like high resolution team arts, plain pitcrews and engineers, not in any way accurate. There remains a generic internal visor. To get this mod released, I thought it was better to have something generic, and these can be patched later as people create them.
As always, thanks to a good number of community members who made this mod possible - some of them long gone from modding sadly, but their work is still being used to this day.
Carl_gpgames - CSM structure base, Generic internal cockpit, pitprops, pitmonitor, GPxPatch graphics, background videos, music and GP4 Memory Access and coding help.
Öggo - Blender plugins, Car Collision editor, Individual tyres & helmets tweak, Visor colour cap, gpf editor, Injectdll, csm procss and general support and bug fixing.
32bobo32 - Pitcrew & Engineer Template, Director & marshal skins. Hi res menu items, no refuel animation, menu fonts, HUD. hi res menu font
prblanco -various caps
gplaps - DirectX 8 patch
crosire - DirectX 9 patch
gp4wonder / DOSOAL - Sound Hardware Acceleration
Petrus - GPH Updater
btone & Ruboy - Def Panel
Duffer - LCD font editor
Zaz - CSM, TSM, Slimtex... and the rest of Zaz Tools
Rene Smit - GPxPatch
Madman271 - GP4Tweaker
Lo2K - GP4 Builder
KerleyF1 - general help, support and testing
Installation Notes
Zaz Tools & GpxPatch
As with all my mods, you will need Zaz Tools and GpxPatch installed. You will also need to install CSM Process (CSM Add-on) for this mod to work too.
It's almost exactly a year ago I last released an update to the 1994 mod, and today I'm pleased to share with you the next update. Back in 2018, I returned to Grand Prix 4 editing by working on the Ferrari 412 T1B. Seven years later, and I'm still working on this mod. There's so much new content included in this update, but yet there's still so much I intend to do. I hope that with each release, you feel a significant step forward in the mod and that is no less true with the latest release, Version 4.3 of the 1994 mod.
This release is themed around the Pacific GP team, as it is one of the headline new cars included in this update of the mod.
New & Updated Cars
1994 Pacific PR01
For this update, I'm proud to present to you the Pacific PR01. As is my modus operandi for this mod, I'm creating the Australian GP versions first, and so this release includes the generally forgotten low-nose car. Unlike some of the other cars I work on in GP4, I spend a lot of extra time trying to get the details right on my 1994 cars , and that takes much longer, so my release rate for 1994 cars is about one a year right now, though this car began several years ago as the project stuttered slowly in the background amongst my other creations.
During my research, when trying to find good photos where they don't exist, I end up pouring over endless videos that show some of the parts of the car not seen on the photos, mainly around the rear end. Among these videos is a fascinating Top Gear feature from the beginning of the season where Keith Wiggins was saying his car could challenge for the top 6.
To be fair, their main competition that year was the other new team, Simtek. Unlike Simtek, Pacific have a proven track record in the lower categories, and whilst both lacked the budget, Pacific had one more ace up its sleave. It had a Adrian Reynard F1 designed car. Back in the late 80s and 90s, Reynard was an ultra successful single seater chassis maker and had success in F3 and F3000. It's the same Adrian Reynard that BAR hired as a consultant, and based on Adrian's success, boasted they may be able to win their first race in F1. In fairness, for 1994, Reynard did just that when his car won on its Indycar debut.
The thing was, this Reynard designed car was from 1991, and wasn't quite ready enough to make the 1992 season. In fact, Pacific were not the first people to use this design, but Benetton who hired Rory Byrne and Pat Symonds from Reynard and brought the designs with them. So in reality, Reynard's car was developed and used by two teams in 1994, one that was ultra developed in the Benetton B194 and was the class of the field, and then there was this under-developed Pacific PR01, and they were comfortably the slowest car on the grid. Pacific didn't really have use of a wind tunnel, and so had to go for 'best-guess' aerodynamics based off these unfinished designs they had bought, and they struggled a lot with the nose of the car, that lead to them trying out a nose-cone using duct tape, before settling for a conventional low nose design. If you listen to Keith Wiggins' interview with Eurosport for the European GP where the nose debuted, it was created in the hope it would do better and bring stability to the car, not because of any proper research or testing, such was the difficulty in finding funding and expertise.
The car was powered by an Ilmor engine that was two years old, and significantly under-powered by 1994 standards.
Yep, this was the 1990s and Pacific was one of the last of this age of amateur, under-funded teams that brought about the pre-qualifying era of F1. From 1996, F1 would get serious with the 107% qualifying rule where the slowest cars would have to qualify within 7% of the pole time, and F1 got a whole more professional and safe.
With 26 grid limit, the Pacific team would have to out-qualify the Simteks to make it to the race. Gachot managed it in Brazil, and inheritted a place on the grid in Imola following Ratzenberger's tragic accident. At Monaco, both Saubers withdrew after Wendlinger's life-changing accident in practice, and Williams and Simtek both ran one car out of respect for the fallen. In Spain, Sauber only entered one car, and Simtek's Andrea Montermini had a horrific accident in practice, breaking both his ankles. In Canada, Simtek once again, entered only one car. So basically, bar the opening race, Pacific only made it to the grid under mitigating circumstances, rather than merit, and never once made it to the finish of the race if it did. After Canada, neither Pacific troubled the back of the grid.
It's any wonder that I would spend as much time as I did on this car, considering it's track (or lack of) record. Despite the lack of funding and resources, there are parts of the car, like the rear suspension cover area, that changed almost every race towards the end of the year, so picking one version with enough photos or videos was challenging. But the main body of the car was created reasonably quickly, but I lost motivation to continue working on this car several times, and in the end it took me nearly 3 years of on-off development to finish it, slowly chipping away at various details each time. I had to take some inspiration from the Benetton B192 and look for some junior Reynard cars to understand some of the architecture underneath the skin, even though I've modelled only a small part of the rear end internals.
In the end, I'm happy with how the car turned out, it looks just as detailed as the other cars I've worked on for the 1994 season and I've tried to make the external parts as smooth as I can whilst trying to stay within GP4 polygon limits. It may not be a car that you choose as your eleventh team often, but I hope you enjoy it for the times it does appear.
In this release, a new high-nose version of this car appears from Hungary through to Portugal, when they changed the rear end. The low-nose cars first appears at the European GP at Jerez, which they used to the end of the season.
Lotus 109 Updated
Thanks to Quickslick for some logo updates that I've applied to the car, including the new Shionogi logo from the French GP onwards, and a missing Elite logo at the British GP on the rear of the sidepod.
Thanks also to David Marques from the F1C community for some new rear wings for the Lotus. This includes the version with winglets first tested, but not used, at the Portuguese GP, but eventually used at the Australian GP. He's also created a low downforce rear wing for the German and Italian rounds.
Thanks to both for their help.
Ligier JS39 Updated
Thanks to Quickslick again for an updated Gitanes Blondes logo, which I had used for the helmet update. Now the cars from the Spanish GP onwards have been updated with the more accurate logo.
Sauber C13 Updated
Thanks to Matty from the Automobilista modding scene who got in touch about conversion of the cars of this mod, which I was glad to share. I'm glad the cars look good in other games, I'm all for that. He sent me some updates he had made for the Sauber, which includes the sidepod flip ups and an updated diffuser.
It is my plan, in the fullness of time, to rework every car on the 1994 grid, so these updates serve as an interim edition. There were some compatibility issues with the late season Tissot liveries, and some alpha livery bugs, so I've tidied them up for this release. The French and British GP now have their correct rear wings, and there's two shape variants for the interim Sauber with updated from Matty, the standard update, and the Hungary rear wing that had additional elements.
Track Specific Updates
All cars now have low downforce rear wing configurations at Hockenheim and at Monza.
The Minardi M194 by Loren has a few new rear wing configurations.
I've also updated my McLaren MP4/9 (Spanish GP onwards), Williams FW16B (German GP onwards) and Ferrari 412T1B (French GP onwards) with track specific versions.
As you can see, there's loads of car updates in this update, the track specific versions are starting to come together nicely.
Helmets
I was hoping that the last update would have all the Arai helmets completed, but I ran out of time. However, I am glad to say I have all new Arai helmets for Barrichello, Schiatarella and Noda.
For the handful of races that Herbert and Zanardi ran the Arai helmet, they are also remade and included in this mod, but for the other races, I've chosed to use Öggo's Rheos helmet.
There was a mistake in Olivier Panis' helmet for the non-tobacco races, so that's been fixed in this version.
Tweaks and bug fixes
External Steering Wheels
I first added team-specific external steering wheels quite early on in the mod's development, but now I've revised them a bit. I've standardised the wheel size, and I've updated the gloves to be team-dependent as well. Due to the limitations of GP4, your selected driver in the CSM menu will load the updated wheel and gloves in to the game.
I've also changed the way the mod handles the arm colours, preferring to update them via GPxPatch performance files rather than through Tweaker. Tweaker did not always load the correct colour arms for the Team 11 selection, where as changing the way it is loaded has made the loading of them much more reliable. It also allowed me to change the arm colours for the Larrousse drivers for the Kronenburg races in the early season.
Physics
I noticed that CSM was not loading the physics properly in v4.2, so that is now fixed. I tried to work on the physics, based on some data shared to me by Dahie (formerly of CTDP), however there's still some bugs to iron out of that. I've not had great success in editing physics in GP4 and I'm learning to work within its boundaries. I was hoping to be able to delve back into GP2 and find some values that I could put in, but the physics editor from the older game doesn't really have any cross over with GP4 physics file. I tried to use the torque data, but that also caused issues, so more work needed here.
However, I did receive some updated physics from jcgrj, and they are also included in this release. So there are three options for physics, choose the set of physics you like best in the CSM menu.
Slipstream
I've spent some time working on slipstream values. I took into account the heights of tracks from sea level, general humidity values, as well as some basic variances between the drag produced by different cars and with some AI help, I was able to create some variance from team-to-team and track-to-track of the relative dirty air each car produces. In reality the differences are small, but it was nice to experiment a little with this feature.
Pitstop Tweaks
I have also tweaked the pitstop times from the data I could find from 1994 and made them a bit more realistic.
Another bug fix is the pit lane speed limits were not working track-to-track. The first three races did not have a speed limit, so I've set it pretty high. They then had a a couple of races at 50kph before upping that to 80kph for the rest of the season. The track specific element in Tweaker was not working for me, so now it is managed via CSM.
Direct X
As with some of my other mods released last year, if you choose the Dx8 option, it will load an updated dll file by gplaps that fixes the z buffer bug that causes distant objects to flicker. This works great for tracks, particularly crowds in the stands, but not so much for clipping on cars. You can still choose to use the Dx9 option by crosire, which I've found is more friendly with newer graphics cards, enables 3D sound effects and allows GPxPatch to run with all cores with much less crashing. So it's up to you to decide which you would like to use.
Mirror Options
Another feature in this mod that is available in my other recently released mods is the ability to choose to show your own car in the mirrors. I don't know why the rear wheel flickers if you do this, but I like this feature anyway.
Transparent Visor Tweak
Thanks again to Öggo for bringing out the fix for coloured visors. This mod simply removes the coloured visors hard-coded into the game for the Arrows and Minardi drivers. I did also alter the shade of the visor and the transparency, it's subtle, but I think its more realistic now.
Engine Sounds Updated
Thanks also goes to jcgrj for creating more engine sounds compatible with my mods. This update sees new and improved Benetton sounds.
Hi-res Menu Fonts
Once more, Öggo was able to allow high resolution fonts in the menus. Thanks to Carl_gpgames for the upscaled GP4 fonts.
Some New Video Backgrounds
You will notice that the first intro video has been updated by me.
Thanks to Trevor Sports for supplying me with an AI upscaled BBC intro along with a nice, era-appropriate end card.
I've also updated one of the main menu backgrounds for the in-game menu.
HD Tyre Treads
You can tell who I worked with a lot on this mod! Thanks to Öggo for helping me upscale Alesi_fan's (Ulf) tyre treads. I tweaked the alpha layers manually to hopefully give a more realistic effect.
HD Internal Visors
I have updated the internal visors in HD and added a few more track specific ones, and made the loading of them a bit more robust than before.
Miscellaneous Fixes
There were some other bug fixes, namely the Belgian flag was incorrect on the pitboard, and there was a missing CSM preview, both of which have now been fixed. The team 11 loading is a bit more consistent after a few tweaks.
Thanks so much, again, to Öggo (and Carl_gpgames) for their work on the Individual Meshes and Textures dll. Whilst this works fantastic through Carl_gpgames GP4 Memory Access, now we've been able to implement it into a CSM Mod.
Updated Zaz Tools
Please note you will need to install Öggo's updated version of Zaz Tools. This get's around a bug where if you have GP4 installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\... CSM would ignore the brackets. This simply creates a junction and updates your Zaz Tools to use this new target link to find the GP4.exe.
This install will also add csmprocess file back into Zaz Tools that was missing in more recent versions, as this is vital for the dll injection to function.
The will fix, for some of you, the mods that have batch files that run on starting or exiting the game, namely the IMSA v2.0 Random mod, the IMSA vs WEC mod (and variants) and the 2021 and 2022 mod, to name a few.
CSM Tweaks
This means that the team-specific 3D rims and driver specific helmets are now controlled by this rather than by the patch.ini. Whilst the effect is the same, it is easier to manage via this new method.
Mirrored Treads Fix
It also means that the 3D tyre treads are no longer mirrored as they were previously, which is particularly noticeable in the wet. This looks great with, as mentioned earlier, the new HD treads.
Internal & External Cockpit Visor
There's a better internal cockpit visor now, thanks to this dll and being able to tweak the transpency an colour.
Unrelated to the dll, but fits here, the external cockpit visors have been optomised a little.
Driver specific Internal Cockpits
New to this mod, we now have team specific internal cockpits. Sadly this does not include the dashboard objects and it also does not include team specific steering wheels. But despite that, this is massive progress and this is the first CSM mod to showcase this working.
To go along with this, I've created internal cockpits for each team, and I've remade the readout displays and AI upscaled. At the moment, this is more proof of concept than refined. A few years ago I had started creating team-specific dash boards, and tagging on the internal cockpits from the created cars, some had more love in this area than others. So I hope to be able to standardise the quality on these in the next update.
If you do select a driver in the CSM menu, then that team's dash objects will work properly, but due to the current limitations, it will not load too well on other cars, or if you use the generic dash.
Car specific Collision Meshes
Also available with this mod is the ability to have collision files for each specific car. Thanks to Öggo's collision meshes editor, I was able to create them quite quickly for each team.
1994 Track Pack updated by Gap177
With new cars and many textures and parts upgraded to HD, the old track pack was not a fitting playground for these cars. I'm so pleased to have finally been able to get permission from Gap177 to share his HD upgrades of Plodekk & Cleberpister's updates. These are massive improvements to the originals, and is the icing on the cake of this immense update.
Hey GP4 fans, it's time for another monster mod update, and this time it's for the 2023 mod.
This update is only possible because of the dedicated work of Paulo Derpich, my thanks goes to him. Like the 2024 mod, Paulo has gone through the entire 2023 season, and for all teams, has brought all the track specific changes not already created.
Thanks to all the original authors who did the hard work of creating the cars and doing the original paintwork. There was a good selection of special liveries previously available, but this update is much more complete with all the sponsor changes throughout the season. This really does help the immersion as you work your way from track to track through the season.
It's really impossible to list all the changes, but here's a few screenshots from the Miami cars:
I had done some very quick cockpit colours on Carl's 2022 cockpit, and Paulo has updated them with sponsors and details and track specific changes as well. Here's a sample of the McLaren Monaco and British GP special liveries and an Aston Martin one too.
It's been a little while since I last updated you with news from the GP4 community, but we've had some ground-breaking releases that will shape the way in which GP4 will be modded and updates shared in the future.
Once again, legends from the GP4 modding community have cooked up an amazing new tool that opens up a new world of possibilities to modding GP4. We also have a host of other exciting new updates below.
Part of the problem beforehand was that a lot of patches were editing the code in GP4.exe itself, which was limited. GPxPatch and GP4 Tweaker opened up new ways of changing GP4 by use of external DLL's. This tool, which is compatible with both GPxPatch and GP4 Tweaker, uses that same philosphy and started creating a big library of existing and new tweaks to be added to the game without having to touch the GP4.exe file. There's great compatibility with previous tools and, for the creative, opens up the possibility of previously thought impossible (see below).
This is a real game changer, and has been developed over many months, bringing together some of the brightest minds in GP4 modding all together in this new tool. It will take time to learn how to make the most of this new tool, but it will be well worth your time and energy.
In conjunction with the release of GP4 Memory Access, we have some amazing new possibilities now possible by Öggo.
High resolution pitcrew models - previously it was limited to only 400 vertices, but now it is no longer limited. With pitcrew models able to be edited in Blender, this is a significant addition.
Individual Meshes & Textures DLL - This DLL expands original Grand Prix 4 to allow full control of how meshes (front/rear wheels, helmets, cockpits, cars) and textures (cockpits, helmets) are loaded, supporting per-driver, per-team, and per-track custom loading. It includes features to manage LODs (Level of Detail), auto-naming conventions, and fallbacks to default GP4 assets when custom assets are unavailable. This DLL enables, for the first time ever, the possibility of having individual cockpits, as this was not possible in native GP4.
by Öggo
2001 Melbourne Track
Hega is doing an amazing job with the 2001 tracks, utilising the AI upscaled tracks by carl_gpgames and his own high resolution textures and objects. We now have this beautiful Australian track added, with 11 out of the 17 tracks now updated.
SkaningeN is back with his track specific car updates, to go with his previous releases of tyres & rims and helmet packs. The cars are originally by Soulbringer and also CM and Josekast respectively. This is a massive work and worth your time to check out all the versions with a season run through.
After the successful release of the 1996 track pack, we have an update to Plodekk and Cleberpister's 1997 track pack, with new pit garages, pit stands and other updates, as well as new performance files and physics.
Thanks to Gap177 for sharing his track updates to the Monza track based on the original work by first TTM and laterly Hega. We have the last six versions of the track now available, incredible work.
It's a shame that Hockenheim no longer has a place on the F1 calendar, but thanks to Gap177 for updating this version of the track based on Hega's previous work.
