Last week, McLaren’s Neil Trundle (working with the team’s historic collection), very kindly welcomed me for a superficial examination of the MP4/2C’s early execution of Carbon Fibre. This will help me restore the 1/12 Protar MP4/2C I built when the model first came out. Since then, CF decals have become common, albeit of a more advanced CF than the 1986 car often used. There are good photos of the MP4/2C with bodywork removed already on the Internet, so without removing bodywork we worked out the types of CF used, as best we could.
After this, Neil gave me a modern CF tutorial, which compared very well with that process described by Nigel Macknight in 1993 in his excellent book featuring the building of the Lola BMS Ferrari Grand Prix car driven by Michele Alboreto (The Modern Formula 1 Race Car (Motorbooks International), ISBN 0-87938-823-4
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Raison D’Etre
If anything I have made brings pleasure and a degree of wonder, please do give God the glory and praise, for it is merely the talent He has given, that I am exercising. Amongst the F1 designs I have incorporated as wall tiles in my workspace, are two with the Bible texts John 3 v 16 and Romans 10 v 9 which help me keep my mind focussed on what really matters. Do give them a read. These models were built as one-off, hopefully unique cars of the 1970's mainly (some late 60's and fewer 90’s and later) which I am now prepared to sell from my personal collection, to the right special people. Over the years, I have been unable to accept commissions due to lack of time and an over indulgent approach. Each model is a museum-display exhibit and they are not in any sense 'working models'. Over many years, I have built 1/12 scale F1 models almost exclusively, each being in the order of 12-14" (30-36cm) long. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, my aim was to increase in a small way, the 1/12 scale representation of Grand Prix car entries to the F1 World Championship that were not available commercially, as kits to be built. Since 2010, Model Plus and Model Factory Hiro especially, have supplied more and more of these older subjects to model makers. The models shown here, perhaps represent my desire to own the the full-scale car, yet that is not feasible or practical (unless you are Bernie Ecclestone) and each of my models feels like the real thing to me, having often spent so much time with the actual car. The photographs of the original cars were taken with special permission. Out of respect to the owners of actual Grand Prix cars or race 'shop owners, these photos are not available for further distribution, nor are my own inexpert engineering drawings. The models are built with the idea of 'no effort spared' and to look as realistic as possible. I will go to eccentric and sometimes otherwise unreasonable lengths to replicate every detail of design and engineering in order to satisfy myself that I have something properly accurate. This includes the concept that all bodywork should be removable in the same way as on the full-size car though not actually with working miniature fasteners of course, but instead faithful visual representations of these important details. In this way, I am able to allow the model to reveal the engineering within. Additionally the underneath of the car is also modelled, for there is much to be enjoyed regarding 'how it all works' from seeing what is not normally visible. I have felt that in this way, these models may serve to educate interested folk as to what makes a Grand Prix car 'tick', for access to the real thing is rare and makes this aspect somewhat mysterious. I have shown some of those I consider the better models at shows, but do so relatively infrequently due to the effort and logistics of getting to often far-flung venues, not to mention the potential accelerated ageing effect on the models themselves, in transporting them. Inspiration comes from the great model makers such as Henri Baigent, Gerald Wingrove, also my friends involved in the same hobby and in particular folk like John Shinton here in the UK and especially Andy Matthews from America who produces 1990s 'gems', which are wonderful to study. Hopefully that covers everything; now all it remains is to enjoy! MRO, August 2010 (updated November 2023)