Skip to main content

Williams-Honda FW11

The Story:
After a long and successfull spell with Brabham, Nelson Piquet switched to Williams for the 1986 F1 season. He was under the assumption that he would be the no. 1 driver within the team. But after some good results at the end of 1985 from Nigel Mansell, teamboss Frank Williams would have none of it.
And so the two Williams drivers kept snatching points from eachother, while Alain Prost picked up the crumbs and in the end walked away with the title, after Mansell had a spectacular tire blow in the final race of the season in Australia.
And so it happened that the (almost) unbeatable Williams team was bested by Alain Prost in his McLaren. Although the constructors title was still Williams'.
The fact that neither Williams driver was able to clinch the World Championship Crown didn't do much good for the relationship between Piquet and Mansell for the following year.

The Kit:
This kit was the fourth F1 kit I built and at first I thought about making Nigel Mansell's version. Not because I'm a big fan of him (quite the opposite in fact), but because I feared that the (then for me) quite difficult paint and decal scheme would be too big a challenge.
But as the build went along, there weren't any problems, so I decided to build Nelson Piquet's car instead.
And a nice car it has become.
It has been mainly painted with Tamiya TS and acrylic colours.
I built this model somewhere around 1991 and at that time I hadn't heard yet of sanding down the seams on the tires or clearcoating the body and super-detailing.
Nevertheless, even now I'm still very pleased with this build.

The Pictures:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Citroën Xsara WRC - Francois Duval, ADAC Rallye Deutschland 2007 (part 2)

As promised, only a few days since the first part, here's the second part of this build. Once in a while I tend to keep a promise... As mentioned in the previous part I have been studying the manual to figure out what needs to be modified for this build. A few things were already shown in the previous part. Here I will discuss the other modifications I'm planning. This will be a nice exercise for when I'm going to build Gigi Galli's slightly beaten Xsara WRC from rally Portugal 2007... Renaissance transkit 24/96 contains a PE sheet with mesh sections for the vents in the hood and the main grille in the front bumper. Renaissance tells you to glue the mesh over the appropriate sections of the body. But I'm intending to remove the plastic and create some sort of box under/behind the openings to suggest depth. The body needs some parts removed and filled. The molded quick-release bonnet and boot pins need to be removed as they will be replaced with PE items. The holes

Citroën Xsara WRC - Francois Duval, ADAC Rallye Deutschland 2007 (part 1)

And off we go on another project. When modelling WRC subjects, you cannot ignore the Citroën Xsara WRC as it is some kind of legend. Especially in the hands of a certain French driver. That's why I have 3 Xsara kits in my stash. None of said driver, that is. But rest assured, he is also present in my WRC collection. With this particular build I'm going to build the car that Francois Duval drove so expertly to the runner-up spot in the 2007 ADAC Rallye Deutschland. Sadly, where the Citroën Xsara WRC is a bit of a legend, the same thing can not be said of the only injection moulded kit if the same car... As said, there's not much choice, as Heller is the only kit manufacturer for this car (although the same kit has also been released by Airfix and Italeri). For this build I'll be using Heller kit no. 80769. Let's just say,it's not a Tamiya kit... By far. For several reasons I chose this particular car because I like the livery and I like Francois Duval too beca

Citroën Xsara WRC - Francois Duval, ADAC Rallye Deutschland 2007 (part 5)

As promised in the previous part in this update I'll show what I changed on the roll cage. The roll cage as included in the kit is far from complete. When looking at on-board footage and reference images found on the internet the roll cage needs some extra tubing added.  Over the years the roll cage of the Xsara WRC has had several variants as I've noticed studying my reference images. Which isn't that strange as the crash test and safety regulations have changed over the years.  The reference images I have of the specific chassis (#28) which Duval raced during the 2007 ADAC Rallye Deutschland are sadly inconclusive about which version of the roll cage was fitted. Which means that the adaptations I made are at best a good "guesstimate"... As long as it looks and feels right, it is right I guess... I used Evergreen styrene rod of 1.6 mm in diameter for the added sections for the rollcage.  The added sections are highlighted in the images below. Another section I&#