58020 Tamiya JPS LOTUS 79 F1 Racer Retrospective

Whilst digging around my storage I found one of my old race cars. It was when we used to race F1 in a carpark. There were two categories, F2 and F1. I still vividly remember seeing these racing around as a youngster and it blew my mind. 

I was able to race the in the F2 class thanks to the loan of a Tamiya Renault F2, I will cover that another time. However I aspired to race in the F1 category. I was born in Nelsons county, so Lotus, and by association F1 have fascinated from a very young age, the allure of the Tamiya Lotus 79 was so strong. The classic JPS livery is still striking today.  

So a bit of info on the real thing (Taken from Wikipedia)..

The Lotus 79 is a Formula One car designed in late 1977 by Colin Chapman, Geoff Aldridge, Martin Ogilvie, Tony Rudd, Tony Southgate and Peter Wright of Lotus. The Lotus 79 was the first F1 car to take full advantage of ground effect aerodynamics

Over the span of its lifetime, the Lotus 79 took 7 wins, 10 pole positions, 121 points and won the last drivers' and constructors' world championships for Lotus. The 79 is credited with pushing Formula One into the modern aerodynamics era. After Rubens Barrichello drove the 79 at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2000, he spoke of its "phenomenal grip and traction", and stated that "it felt like a modern Grand Prix car"

Tamiya released their model  (58020) in 1980 and it is a fantastic replica of the actual car. Even now after all these years it looks stunning. This shell was not the tattered shell that I used to race (that was  the Green Martini livery). This was a spare shell that would be mounted on the chassis after it had been cleaned, and placed on  my shelf. 

The chassis is an evolution of the original Tamiya F1 chassis. Its called the CS chassis to denote Competition Specification. At the time I remember the main difference being the 540 motor and the metal parts in the gearbox. 

The other main change was the use of GRP for the lower chassis material. This gave the chassis at least a little bit of flex. Which was useful as there is literally no suspension for the kit. I have the foam tyres, but there were optional rubber tyre sets that were popular at the time, principally because you had more dampening from the tarmac. It was many decades ago, so I don't remember anyone doing anything to the tyres other than cleaning them with WD40.

Looking at the car now, it's amazing just how heavy it is. A hard ABS body will  not help, but the chassis is also laden with lots of metal parts, including a very large mechanical speed controller. The whole thing weighs in at nearly 1400g without electrics. 

It's also very long, at 435mm. It is 200mm wide, the same width that was adopted by the original F1 class, before Tamiya themselves released the narrower F104 chassis to emulate the look of the contemporary F1 cars of that time.

I've always had a soft spot for the F1 class. In fact one of the very earliest articles I wrote was about racing F1. Its a fantastic class, but like all spec style classes it can lose its way through cars being released that go against the spirit of the rules. I remember the Corally F1 killing the class,  it was basically a Pro 10 with the widest rear tyres I've ever seen. Unfortunately even when the class had a renaissance with Tamiya releasing the F104 chassis.. it soon  struggled with inconsistent rules, never settling on tyres etc so I've not really got into it as much as I would have liked to.

I'm constantly searching for the front and rear rubber tyre options for this kit. If you ever spot some please let me know.

Around 15 years ago, Tamiya released a more up to date version of the JPS Lotus type 79 

(84122) It was a limited run kit based on the F104W chassis and featured revised version of the originals lexan shell.  I might try to hunt this down at some point.

I very much doubt I will run this chassis again, MSC's scare me nowadays, and that body is almost irreplaceable..  but it is currently out of storage and looking good on the shelf :)