Click on the images above for a larger image. Use the back in frame button to return here

Background

This is the Ferrari driven by Gilles Villeneuve and Pironi in the 1981 F1 season. Gilles drove it to 2 wins in Monaco and Spain. The Spain race was well known for Gilles ability to hold off 5 other cars for most of the race due to the power of the Ferrari Turbo engine. The handling of the car was terrible and the other cars would catch up on the twisty parts of the racetrack. The turbo charged engine would allow him to build up a gap on the long straights. This was the first year for the 1.5l V6 Ferrari turbo charged engine after several years with the 3.0l 12 cylinder transversed gearboxed car.

The Kit

This is the FDS kit mastered by Bosica. Excellent detail for it's day but is slightly eclipsed by the super kits today. Considering he didn't have the ability to supply CNC manufactured parts and photo etched the castings are well done. I have a few of his other kits and they seem to be more detailed than this one. Maybe it is the car and the nature of the model that makes it look very simple.

I replaced the wing endplates with thin aluminum sheet. I also added some wiring and replaced some white metal parts of the kit with brass rod. Fit of the parts was not too bad but was a bit of a shock at the fiddling needed. I got too used to the excellent fit of Tamiya and Tameo kits.

The roll bar and engine support rods were replaced with brass rod. The wheels were also rough compared to current day turned and photo etched multi-piece parts. I replaced them with Tameo aftermarket items. The only problem was finding wheels with the correct spoke pattern. I didn't find the correct set so I replaced it with ones with the closest pattern I could find.

The body was painted with automotive lacquer paints. All the interior parts were painted with Tamiya paints or Testors Metalizers.

I had problems with the wheels fitting on the hubs so I had to fake the connection point on a couple of them. The rear of the top body panel was a separate piece and I had to glue it to the rest of the body before painting. I also redid the NACA ducts as supplied they were a bit rough and slightly shaped wrong. I added PE aftermarket seatbelts as none was supplied in the kit.