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I am not a great fan of Formula one today; I really lost most of my interest in the early seventies with the arrival of sponsorship and security fences around the paddock. As a small boy in the 1.5 litre days I came to meet and talk to my heroes, The great Jimmy Clark, Jo Siffert, Jack Brabham, Denny Hulme, Mike Spence, Bruce Mclaren and Chris Amon.
In the late sixties it was still possible to spend time watching the mechanics change an engine and even on occasions help out one of the smaller teams making tea or fetching tyres. I met Jochen Rindt whilst a Formula 2 Driver and Ronnie Peterson also when in Formula 2 and I never remember any of them too busy to spare a moment for a young fan.
I have the TAMEO WCT63 Lotus 25 to build but Mario asked me if I would build one of the latest superkits; the question was which one?. All the recent kits are outside my period of interest so it was to the books to read about the seasons 75/77/84/91.
Three of the Championships were won by Niki Lauda on by Senna and the more I read the more it seemed that the 1977 championship car should be the one. I admired Lauda at the time for the way he came back from his accident in 1976, I admired his courage in saying no to racing in the wet at Japan. What I had forgotten was how hard his 1977 championship was, the quality of the opposition was as high as perhaps it has ever been, but also he had to race against a team mate who was being preferred and a management structure and press who were openly hostile towards him. To settle the decision Ferrari has at last again won a championship and Mario is a fan of the 312!
The Opposition. The cars.
In 1977 there were seventeen manufacturers and 1977 saw two major advances that were to change Formula one racing cars over the next few seasons. Lotus introduced the Wing car the Lotus 78 and Renault introduced the turbo. Whilst many of the cars were powered by the Ford DFV we had flat twelves from Alfa Romeo and Ferrari, BRM in its last season had a V twelve as did Ligier with the Matra engine. These were all three litres but Renault produced its 1.5 litre turbo charged engine. All the cars had Goodyear tyres but Tyrrell had six wheels. Renault was not the only new team there was also Wolf with Jody Scheckter as its driver and he was to become the next Ferrari World Champion and the last before Schumacher this year. Williams was just about
to become a force
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The Drivers
In his own team was the Number one Carlos Reutemann, on his day one of the greatest, and in the other teams; Alan Jones, Mario Andretti, Emerson Fittipaldi, James Hunt, Jody Scheckter had all been or would become world champions. In the season 21 drivers scored points and only four of them would not become a Grand Prix Winner. Lauda won the championship with two races to spare and was replaced for the last two races by Gilles Villeneuve.
The kit
Presentation; The box is 18cm X 8cm X 4cm and one is not prepared for what it contains.
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There is one A4 size sheet with colour and black and white photographs.
There are three A3 size sheets of instructions printed both sides with over 100 computer-produced diagrams on how to build this kit.
These instructions appear to be the best I have seen with any kit in any scale or medium I have seen. There are two sheets of decals in case you make a mistake with one. Please other manufacturers do the same. The parts except for tyres and screen appear all to be metal; Cast white metal, turned metal and photoetch brass or steel. The parts are beautifully packed in heat sealed polythene. I have not built a modern F1 kit with photoetch parts before so this is not the kit I would
recommend to myself if I was a new customer thus it will be interesting to see how difficult the kit is to build.
I will start to build the kit and show the first stages next month.
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