Fenix Mistral 3.5 Team , F1 Chassis build and review.

Back in August 2025, the legendary Jitse Miedema took the EFRA F1 Championship using this very chassis. The Fenix Racing Mistral 3.5 is the latest evolution of the earlier Mistral designs by Giorgio Favaretto and Marco Faveratto, designed and developed in the home of all great things — especially Formula 1 and fast cars — Italy.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on the Mistral 3.5 Team kit directly from Fenix, with the goal of competing in the 2026 BRCA F1 Championship.

Some of you may remember that I raced a BRCA F1 round last year at my home track in the Cotswolds. That car, however, was nowhere near as high-tech as this one.

The Build

The box itself is fairly simple — nothing flashy. But that’s very much the Fenix approach. This brand focuses on the engineering and driving experience, rather than glossy packaging.

That said, the top-right corner proudly highlights something very special: EFRA Champion. For a relatively small brand, that’s a serious achievement and a clear sign of what this chassis is capable of.


Inside the box, everything is neatly packaged and clearly labelled. Each bag corresponds to the build stages, making it easy to work through the assembly (mostly — more on that later).

The first thing that catches your eye is the chassis itself. The carbon fibre is absolutely gorgeous, featuring a large cut-out at the front for the steering tray. For a kit that costs under £420, it immediately  feels like you’re getting something truly premium.

The first thing that catches your eye is the chassis itself. The carbon fibre is absolutely gorgeous, featuring a large cut-out at the front for the steering tray. For a kit that costs under £420, it immediately feels like you’re getting something truly premium.

Front End Assembly

The manual starts with the front end.

There’s nothing overly revolutionary here, but everything fits together beautifully. The parts are well labelled and the machining quality is excellent.

One feature I particularly like is the steering limiter system, which uses screws to control steering throw. Compared to my old Tamiya F103 where setting endpoints often involves guesswork and servo noise this is a far more precise and elegant solution.

Next up is the sliding front servo mount, which allows you to easily adjust the wheelbase.

The Mistral supports three wheelbase options:

• 270mm – Maximum IFMAR legal length, ideal for large open tracks
• 265mm – A great all-round setup
• 260mm – Perfect for tighter, twisty indoor tracks

The clever part is that the servo mount and front suspension slide together, meaning you don’t need to re-shim or rebuild the rear pod when changing wheelbase.

Servo & Steering Setup

The servo mount itself is a semi-floating design, similar to setups used in some touring cars.

For this build I chose a Savox 1251MG+ Black Edition servo. The 80mm lead is handy, but let’s be honest — the all-black aesthetic looks fantastic in the car.

Once installed, the IDFM steering system really starts to show off the quality of the design. The aluminium camber-link mounts are beautifully machined and look fantastic.

I also installed a Sanwa SMD receiver, which is incredibly lightweight and helps keep things tidy.

Caster adjustment is handled via the upper arm mounts. By simply moving the screws you can select different caster angles. The kit includes 6° and 12° options, and after checking a few setups I opted to start with 6°.

Other options are available separately, including 3°, 9°, and 15°.

One part of the build that required some patience was the turnbuckles. Even with a healthy amount of Vaseline, they were quite tight and I actually snapped one during assembly. Thankfully I had a matching spare in my parts box.

The Ackermann is also adjustable. I started with a recommended baseline:

• Middle hole on the steering yoke
• Outer hole on the steering knuckles

This will definitely be something I experiment with once testing begins.

Rear Pod – Bag B

Next up was Bag B, which contains the rear pod assembly.

This section introduces several setup features that are quite new to me, coming from an F103 background — including roll centre adjustment and side dampers.

One really nice touch is the huge range of shims included for ride height adjustments. You get spacers from 0.5mm to 3.5mm in 0.5mm increments, which will make fine tuning at the track much easier.

I didn’t take many photos during this stage because the build flowed so smoothly. However, if you want a deeper explanation of how the rear roll centre adjustments affect handling, I highly recommend watching the Fenix Racing YouTube build video.

Dampers – Bag C

Bag C covers the side dampers and rear shock.

The side dampers are fairly conventional. I filled them with 20k oil as a starting point, although I’ll adjust this during testing.

Jitse himself recommends running the kit side springs unless grip levels are extremely high. Most of the tuning can be done through the dampers and the rear shock instead.

The only small challenge here was getting the side springs to seat properly, but once I discovered the trick, twisting them into place, they stayed perfectly secure.

Chassis Quality

The chassis plate itself deserves special mention.

The carbon fibre quality is absolutely superb — easily on par with brands like Xray and Schumacher.

That large slot at the front of the chassis isn’t just for looks either. It allows the servo and electronics to float slightly, introducing controlled chassis flex that helps generate grip.

Rear Assembly

The rear pod bolts onto the chassis very easily. Occasionally you may need to adjust the lower turnbuckles on the roll centre plate slightly to ensure the pod sits perfectly level.

Once assembled, the car really begins to look like a proper race machine.

And thanks to the sliding front assembly, wheelbase adjustments can still be made without disturbing the electronics, which is a huge practical benefit.

Rear Shock

Next came one of my least favourite RC tasks, building shocks. Thankfully there’s only one main shock to deal with here.

Although it comes partially assembled, you still need to strip it down to lubricate the O-rings properly.

I filled it with 500cst oil, mainly because that’s what worked well for me on my Tamiya F103 and F104 at the Cotswolds.

The kit also includes alternative piston options, including some very nice V-shaped conical pistons that allow for fine tuning of the damping characteristics. For now, I stuck with the standard 4-hole piston as a baseline setup.

The “Team Parts” Surprise

At this stage I realised I had made a small mistake.

There’s a separate bag containing the Team upgrade parts, including:

• A longer shock mount
• A longer shock collar
• Different front stops
• Additional shims

I had completely overlooked this during the initial build. Thankfully it was easy to swap the parts over, but it would have been helpful if the manual highlighted this bag earlier in the process.

Rear Wing Mount

One particularly interesting design feature is the WTC rear wing mount.

Rather than attaching directly to the rear pod, the wing mount connects to the main chassis behind the LiPo. This allows the rear wing to remain more stable and less influenced by rear suspension movement.

Initially I was concerned the rear axle might foul the mounting arms, but they can be easily shimmed to clear the axle and allow you to adjust the wing height as needed.

Rear Differential

The rear differential is beautifully made.

Despite using a stainless axle, the whole unit feels incredibly light. The kit includes ceramic diff balls as standard, along with high-quality bearings.

My only real complaint, and something I did feed back to Fenix is the inclusion of a 64dp spur gear.

From my experience, most racers tend to run 48dp gearing (Not the RCRacer thought), so I swapped the kit spur for a Kimbrough 48dp instead.

With some Fenix Virgin Syrup diff grease, the diff built up beautifully smooth.

Almost Ready

At this stage the car was essentially complete and ready to hit the track.

For the body I chose the Phigamma3 shell, which is incredibly lightweight and fits the Mistral perfectly. After a quick trim and paint job, the car was finally ready for testing.

TESTING

For a bit of a “shake-down” test ahead of the new BRCA F1 season, I head to my local outside track, Cotswolds Model Car Club to put the car (and my iconic F1) through a bit of “remembering how to drive on tarmac”. It wasn’t especially warm or inviting at Cotswolds on the day, with a mist rolling in off the hills and a dry, but cold track at the start of the morning.

First run out with the Mistral and the rear end was a tad snappy, dropped back into the pits to adjust the oils I’d used in the side dampers (went up to 50k) and back out with some fresh warmed tyres and it was much better. Myself and another Iconic F1 driver found that on the rubber tyres, we were having to take the “go-kart” line around a fair few of Cotswolds corners just to get some grip. Something we noticed way back when we did the BRCA F1 event last year. Seemingly, in cold conditions, Cotswolds grips up in an odd way!

A splash of a shower bought a halt to the slick tyre running, which was absolutely fine as I wanted to get the car out in the wet (something we always have to contend with in the UK). A set of home-made wets were fitted (with the same setup) and it was back out on track.

The Mistral behaved perfectly. I was able to get the power down on the racing line and really get a feel for how this car was going to perform come nationals time.

A few tweaks to the setup later, I had a car that was absolutely bang on for the conditions - which could be tweaked to a faster, dry setup with just a few shim changes. Exactly what you want on a race day! Something that drives easily (well, as easily as an F1 can…) and goes exactly where you want it to when you’re hammering round.

 

Time wise; we were about a second off the pace we had at the BRCA national at the end of last year. Which in reality is going to be very ON Pace when the time comes to race properly with the chassis. The low grip at the start of the RC Season, especially at Cotswolds, is always a test and it was reassuring to find I was able to extract some pace from the car and have no initial niggles from the build.

SUMMARY

The Mistral 3.5 Team is an absolute beast of a kit. From the innovative servo/wheelbase system, right through to the roll centre adjusting on the rear pod. The wing being “off the chassis” as opposed to the rear pod is another mega highlight - meaning I’ll have consistent downforce regardless of what angle the pod is at. The car retails for £415.00 through the UK Distributor (Clear View RC) and there is the more “standard” version (without a few of the trick upgrades) for £375.00.

It's going to be fascinating to put this car up against the bigger brands in the world of RC F1, and I'm even hoping to hand it to the reigning BRCA F1 champion, Luke Lee, for him to give it a bash round and get his thoughts.

Stay tuned, and I’ll be sure to do a more indepth review when I’ve got it on track at the first round of the BRCA Nationals, from Stafford in April.

Fenix racing website is here (Click link)

Speek soon, Radders...