The F1M Forums

Steffen_T wrote:I think you are right with the assumption of a foamcover being used.
Unfortunately the seat of the Hasegawa kit seems to represent the seat with the foamcover attached.
I have several german Motorracing Magazines at home and will take a look during the weekend. They usually had close connections to ATS, Rial and Zakspeed.
Currently I would think the best way to do the seat is to do it according to the Hasegawa instruction with a semi gloss clearcoat and seatbelts being added. The decal attached to the seat indicates Hasegawa had a good reference while developing the kit. You won't add such a decal without a reason...

If the kit provides only the seat with cover, it should be no problem cause the car run in that set up You only have to check if the other parts are done right for that special race you try to build. For sure, if you want to build one of the races where these parts have not been used, you have to do some additional scratch building.
What decal for the seat are we talking about? Can`t follow cause i don`t have this kit.
Maybe they had a good research, but i have seen decalsets (Studio27) as example where half of the set was not accurate, heavy mistakes by Lettertypo, missing outlines at letters, total wrong and even missing badges etc.. Sometimes it`s better to do some research if you want to do an accurate version for a special race, not all kit producers are doing a well job at research and do a more "overall" version then a special race
I would do a flat coat or even some flocking on the seat as all forward Zakspeed cars had a black leathered alcantara seat, and the cover in red or white depending on the driver and race your trying to build.

daveyman wrote:I've just found high shots of the car at Monaco and Schneider had red padding at the back of his shoulders and Suzuki had white padding if that helps at all.

Yes thank you daveyman, i forgot to add which driver had the red and white cover, your pointing out right.

gp-models wrote: What decal for the seat are we talking about? Can`t follow cause i don`t have this kit.

This one in step two:


The decal itself is not more detailed then this picture in the instruction. Just two red circle's and a white circle.

I finished my research, but sadly I didn't had much success this time, except a picture from preseason testing for the 1990 season before Zakspeed withdraw from Formula 1.



The foamcover (red on this car) seems to go down the whole seat until the steering wheel. Another reason why I suppose the Hasegawa instruction might be right.

So white it is.

Thanks everyone for your search trying to help, I think Hasegawa instructions are correct, the seat must have been white except for the spare car. Thanks a million to Thomas for the help.
I got my sister back in Italy to go through my VHS collection and get a tape with parts of German pre-qualifying in 1989...I remember I saw something like a driver getting off the Zakspeed. She confirmed (after many messages back and forth with instructions of what Zakspeeed is ) that when Schneider jumped off the car, the seat was all white, just like the photo posted by Steffen from a magazine clip.
I also saw the video of the visit to Zakspeed museum, but I tend not to trust entirely those restored cars, many things might have been replaced or modified since their racing days. So it's funny that the persons concerned like Bernd Schneider and Peter Zakowski seem not to remember correctly the seat color. The few photos around confirm the opposite.

Thanks again everyone, shame that there's so little material around from those years about smaller teams such as Coloni, Zakspeed, Rial

An other source would be Christian Reinsch.
https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1 ... ent_filter

He is the author of the great Zakspeed book and got access to the Zakspeed Foto database. He is a very nice guy was able to help me with my build of the Zakspeed C1/8 model.
Maybe worth to contact him through Facebook?
Regards Christian

Steffen_T wrote:I finished my research, but sadly I didn't had much success this time, except a picture from preseason testing for the 1990 season before Zakspeed withdraw from Formula 1.



The foamcover (red on this car) seems to go down the whole seat until the steering wheel. Another reason why I suppose the Hasegawa instruction might be right.

Nice Catch Steffen, astounding that they obviously played with a lot of seats in this unsuccessfull season, the car only appeared at 2 races, in all other races they did not get managed to qualify.

Corpsegrinder wrote:So it's funny that the persons concerned like Bernd Schneider and Peter Zakowski seem not to remember correctly the seat color. The few photos around confirm the opposite.

That`s not correct, Peter`s answer was that the Sinsheim Museum car is matching cause they did not change it and the first pic from Steffen showed a foam cover, not the seat itself!
With all this in the background, you can do a red or white cover depending on the race like Monaco, on some the cover does not appear anyway, so kit part have to be modified.
I wonder why they made a model of this car, it was a desaster season for Zakspeed....

gp-models wrote: I wonder why they made a model of this car, it was a desaster season for Zakspeed....

I suppose mainly because of the Japanese connections to this car:
The first to use a Yamaha engine and with Aguri Suzuki a Japanese driver.

Reading the interviews before the start of the season the Team seemed to be enthusiastic despite the reliability-problems and even when the season started in Rio they kept saying the engine is good when it works.
So everybody (obviously including Hasegawa) expected an increasing performance during the season. By the time it became obvious there won't be a big improvement, Hasegawa had surely developed their kit too far to cancel it.

When I read the introduction text in the kit instructions, I guess
a) they had the kit finished before the season and
b) Hasegawa never bothered to update the text

gp-models wrote: With all this in the background, you can do a red or white cover depending on the race like Monaco, on some the cover does not appear anyway, so kit part have to be modified.
I wonder why they made a model of this car, it was a desaster season for Zakspeed....

So far all the photos I have seen dated 1989 in racing trim and footage from German GP, the cover (or padding) was always on, I haven't yet seen a picture with black seat dated 1989. So I will leave the kit seat white, as if the padding was on, no need to modify it as it's ready to be assembled. I'd have to make changes if I wanted it black, meaning getting rid of plastic in excess representing the padding and placing the seat much lower in the cockpit. But this isn't an option as in my opinion it never raced like that.

Daveyman, yes you are right, in the end the seat was either white or red, I am going with white even if red would be quite unique!

oooops, a black foam cover??? Only run in white or red???