Time warp F1 car

[PR19_Kit]

One of my other modelling hobbies is slot-racing, which I re-discovered about a year ago. As the last time I raced before then was 40 years ago I'm not exactly the fastest driver in my local club, but it's still great fun. 

The last full size Grand Prix I attended in person was the British GP at Brands in 1986, won by 'Our Nige' (Nigel Mansell to the un-initiated....)  in his Williams FW11 turbo 'Red 5' from his team mate Nelson Piquet with Alian Prost's McLaren over a lap down. I'd been a Mansell fan for some time and that race strengthened my admiration for his 'take no prisoners' driving style. A year later it was re-inforced greatly by his amazing fight back from a tyre stop and his subsequent pass on Piquet at Stowe with two laps to go to win yet again.



After my return to slot racing it took some time for me to figure out what was what on the scene these days, and one thing I discovered was that F1 cars weren't raced all that much these days, and not at all at my local club, the Wye Valley Slot Car Club, apart from the 50s era cars we raced as a secondary class. Nevertheless I looked around for a model of 'Red 5' just so I could have a go with it. The only one I could find was the Scalextric version, and having bought one I found it wasn't exactly the fastest thing on the track and my efforts to improve its performance were foiled by its weight and weird sandwich style construction, so it went back in the storage box.

For 2015 the club decided to run an F1 Class again, much to my enjoyment, using the Ninco generic F1 cars that come in five or six different team colours but were all the same shape, loosely based on 1999-2000 season cars. By a stroke of luck I won one of these cars in the Club Christmas raffle, which was very welcome indeed, but it was a Minardi, not exactly my fave F1 team, or even one that raised itself above my horizon. So having got the car home a plan came to mind....



Extending my Whiff modelling here into the slot racing field suggested that I could re-paint the Minardi as 'Red 5' so I stripped the car down and started on the job. The shapes of the two cars are quite different, especially the height of the side pods, which means some of the colour areas are the wrong shape for the plethora of sponsor decals that the 1986 car carried, but as I've been printing my own decals for some time so re-sizing them wouldn't be too much of a problem, or so I thought. I oversprayed all the components, the main body, front and rear wings and the barge boards with Halfords Grey Primer and then gave them a colour coat of Halfords Appliance White. Masking off the various areas wasn't too difficult and I added the blue and yellow of the 1986 car on the body shell and the black areas on the two wings.

I downloaded lots of photos of the real 'Red 5' and took some reference photos of my Scalex car as well, and from that lot produced two sheets of decals for the car, one one clear backing paper and one on white. Then started on by far the most time consuming part of the build, applying the decals. In all it took me two days to do that, not helped by my somewhat 'mature' decal paper tending to curl up! After a few re-prints, as I'd got the sizes a tad wrong here and there, and a lot of help from Johnsons Klear to stick them down I managed to finish the decalling and re-assembly, and it looked pretty good to me.

The only thing missing was 'Our Nige' and the somewhat emaciated Ninco driver was NOT up to the job! I think they must have scaled him at 1/43 scale as he sure isn't 1/32. Having already labouriously hand-painted the 'Nige' in my Scalex FW11 I levered him out and tried to fit him into the Ninco car but his arms were about  a scale foot too long! So out came the razor saw and my 'Nige' now drives with his hands very close to his chest...

So here we have my time warped 'Red 5', looking NOTHING like the real world Williams FW21 of 1999, at least not in its colour scheme even if the shape bears a slight resemblance to the later car. My car for the club's F1 class may not be the fastest on the track, I'm still usually holding down last place in most races, but it surely will look the most different!

[zenrat]

Brands Hatch 1986.  I may have been there.
i was certainly at one race at Brands where Mansell won in a Williams so it was either the European GP in 1985 or the British GP in 1986.  We were at the slight kink between Druids and Graham Hill and we jumped the fence and invaded the track after he won.  Try doing that now!

[Steel Penguin]

lovely job on matching the colours to a different shape, Kit 

[Dizzyfugu]

Nice one!   

[eatthis]

mansell was AWESOME 
the only guy iv ever seen go toe to toe with senna consistently!
and some of the overtakes he did just defied belief

[PR19_Kit]

mansell was AWESOME 
the only guy iv ever seen go toe to toe with senna consistently!
and some of the overtakes he did just defied belief

My sentiments entirely. 

And the only F1 World Champion to take the CART Championship the following year. As the F1 season that year still had a few races to run he was a Champion in both series at the same time!

Thanks for the positive views on my 'Red 5'. I was concerned that it was a trifle off the wall for this place. I'll post some pics of my BA Racing Team Jaguar XJR-9 soon. And yes, the 'BA' does mean British Airways. 

[McColm]

Great idea and well done. Could be the solution I've been looking for.
Thanks.

[jcf]

Beauty, Kit. 

[Martin H]

I was concerned that it was a trifle off the wall for this place.

Off the wall for this place? Come on Kit! You must have forgotten about Radish.

Nice car BTW

[eatthis]

mansell was AWESOME 
the only guy iv ever seen go toe to toe with senna consistently!
and some of the overtakes he did just defied belief

My sentiments entirely. 

And the only F1 World Champion to take the CART Championship the following year. As the F1 season that year still had a few races to run he was a Champion in both series at the same time!

Thanks for the positive views on my 'Red 5'. I was concerned that it was a trifle off the wall for this place. I'll post some pics of my BA Racing Team Jaguar XJR-9 soon. And yes, the 'BA' does mean British Airways. 

and he did it after putting a hole in a 6 foot thick concrete wall!

[Captain Canada]

Great job on that one ! Definitely looks better.

I stopped watching F.1 in the late 90s. Still watch MotoGP tho !

[Go4fun]

Some people like to take older cars from the 50s and 60s and paint them up as some of the newer Nascar heros. I like you did a turn-about on that. Now you got me thinking, Always a dangerous thing.

[PR19_Kit]

Some people like to take older cars from the 50s and 60s and paint them up as some of the newer Nascar heros. I like you did a turn-about on that. Now you got me thinking, Always a dangerous thing.

Hehehe. 

I did think of doing it in three earlier schemes before latching into 'Red 5'. One was the 1965 BRM P261 in green with the orange nose band, second was the Lotus 25 in their green with the yellow stripe of the same period and third was the 1968 Gold Leaf Lotus 49. Given the angular shape of the Minardi though I didn't see them working as well as a scheme with the colours in layers, like 'Red 5' has.

[PR19_Kit]

Here's the pics of my BART (British Airways Racing Team  ) Jaguar XJR9 that I built. It was what's called a 'White Kit' in the slot racing business in that it's a bag of bits with an unpainted body shell and NO instructions at all! It took me ages to figure out where all the bits went, but it's not turned out too bad I think.

Note the BA 'Swooshes' all over the place, and the team's motto, 'To Fly, To Race'. 

[Go4fun]

Oh that is just a loverly little racer there Kit.