1/20th Scale Ferrari F1 2000, Japanese G.P.


Modeling Descriptions and Photos

This is yet another Ferrari F12000 kit with minor scratch building items. I believe there are many "write up" about this kit, I won't repeat anything ordinary here. I will mention some interesting points here and there though.

This is a Japanese G.P version of Ferrari F1 2000 model and it has a different front wing. The front wing does not sweep backwards, it is straight across side to side. Another unique feature of Japanese G.P. version is that the mirrors are placed in a different location. The mirror mount is also different. There is also an extra sponsor logo placed in the rear wheel area. Other than that, everything is pretty much same as the "normal" F1 2000 Ferarri... ^_^

Converting the French G.P. version of F1 2000 kit to Japanese G.P. version can be done by getting a Studio 27 Japanese G.P. conversion kit. The conversion kit contains the correct front wing, mirrors, and the decals. For those who want to scratch build their own parts, the conversion seems to be an easy one as making the front wing seems very trivial.


Radiators?

How about Bare-Metal foil? It worked quite nicely for me. I just trimmed off edges afterwards. By the way, the white resin body is from BBR kit and interesting enough, the measurement is different between two!



Mirror, Mirror, Mirror. Which is the quickest F1 car?

As for the mirrors, I blocked the original mirror mounting points and drilled new holes. Then I scratch-built the mirror mounts.



The Seat Harness

The engine detail will be added later on. The seat harness is complete here. I folded the belt here and there to make the harness position seems natural.



X rays!

This is how I prevent the black color from inner monocoque to darken the body color. It involves four coats of paint. 1) white primer inside/outside, 2) Ferrari Red outside, 3) silver inside, 4) then black inside on top of coat 3).

The silver coat adds a layer between the outside and inside of the body panel and it helps the body color to stay bright red!



Some Pictures

Some pictures... You can see that I have already been adding pipes...



Kill the Engine!

Don't forget this little kill switch.



Engine View

I have added four radiator pipes, O2 sensors on the exhaust pipes, side electronic wiring, and other connectors. I like clean builds and I only added what I think is important. I could have added more components and detail parts, but I also wanted the kit to look clean...



Engine View


The top view shows off the Ferrari engine.



Completed Side View #1


The front wing is made up with white metal parts and it made the car front very heavy... The Tamiya kit includes two circular clear parts to mount under the car to help heavy suspension loads. I will look into using them...



Completed Side View #2



Overall View

The car is finally finished here. I enjoyed building this kit and converting it to a Japanese G.P. version. The building experience was very rewarding for me too because this F1 2000 car represents a great achivement of the team Ferrari. I am currently working on a Full-View version of this car and it is another fun building experience. Now that I have built several F1 2000 kits, I want to build yet another one with just all kinds of crazy things. ^_^