History:
In 1998 Team Tyrrell competed in their final season, before they became BAR for 1999. British American Tobacco already owned the Team in 1998 and when they decided to take Ricardo Rosset as second driver instead of the experienced Jos Verstappen Ken Tyrrell decided it was the right time for him to retire from the Team.
The other driver of the Team was Toranosuke Takagi in his first season of F1. Interestingly Takagi was sponsored by Mild Seven by Japan Tobacco on his suit and helmet, while the car already had the name British American Tobacco on the nose.
Tyrrell failed to score any points during the 1998 season. Their final race was the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka.
I am not really interested in F1 cars beyond 1994. For that reason my collection almost ends with cars from 1994. The only exceptions are the cars by Tyrrell and a few of the available plastic kits.
As Tyrrell didn't scored any points during the 1998 season, their most distinctive race was the last race at Japan that ended the Teams history. As Rosset failed to qualify I didn't hesitate to choose the version of Takagi.
As mentioned before the kit came from studio27. And except a few minor problems it was fun to build it.
The problems are:
- The front wing is sitting too low. I got it a bit higher by removing some resin from below the nosecone.
- The rear suspension is too narrow. I expended it by adding some plastic sheet on both sides to the uprights.
- The rims were too wide for the narrow tires.
- The decal placement instruction is inaccurate; you have to rely on reference pictures.
I don't blame studio27 for the inaccurate decal placement, because I had a hard time to find good reference pictures myself. And when studio27 released this kit more than 10 years ago the situation wasn't better surely. Depending on the race the left and the right side of this car can have different decals!
I recommend to paint as much of the black areas as possible, because you will have to use black paint anyway. And getting the large decals layed over the curved surface is not going to look good.. If you have good skills you should also paint the silver stripes on the engine cover.
And here is the Tyrrell alongside the championship winning McLaren MP4/13 by Tamiya.
I actually built the Tamiya kit earlier this year to have something I can compare the sizes of the Tyrrell with. And in this regard the McLaren was a big help overcoming the problems mentioned above.
With three finished models so far, 2023 is my best modelling year in a very long time.
Thanks a lot for looking!
