terry.sc

Considering their paint scheme is a bright yellow nose, if they have a stepped nose it's going to be called the Red Duck.

aarcobra

iTrader: (12)

Looks like its foams and wide....

texastc

iTrader: (2)

another pic shows one in action with what look like rubber tires.

InspGadgt

Yeah those look like F103 sized rims so most likely F103 rims and rubber tires will fit. By the looks of it I'd say it is probably also a F103 wheel base.

fox88gt

iTrader: (5)

Just thought I would share my F104 Pro completely rebuilt for TCS racing at Harbor Hobbies in March. In addition to the McLaren MP4/24 body i also added the X1 roll damper and aluminum motor mounts. 100% TCS Legal Pretty proud of the paint work on this one, Tamiya PS48 3 light coats backed with PS5 Black heavy. Very pleased with the result.

Jeff

nrtv20

iTrader: (9)

Great looking car!! plus the 2012 Mclaren F1 car looks the best of the releases so far!

Team Lotus

aarcobra, the Serpent 1/10 F1 car is obviously aimed at those who don't care about scale appearance and want all-out performance. That is why it is not "scale" and is wide with wide foam tires. It's done in a similar vein to the Corally F1 car. It is however, better looking than the Corally car.

I am not interested in either car. Too expensive, and not scale. I like my F1 cars to actually look like the real thing. I'm into "scale" model car racing.

terry.sc

Check the pictures in the serpent F1 thread, the Serpent is the same size as the F109 and F104W, using F103 size tyres. That is as scale as every other F1 kit apart from the Corally. They have even designed the front end to fit within current F1 rules, with the centre mounting.

Unless you consider only the narrow F104 as being scale.

NiMo

Something I have noticed on the F1 front is that over in America and possibly Canada the appeal seems to be in favour of the recent modern look narrow chassis on rubber tyres and 21.5 (unsure if zero timed of open), whilst over here in Europe the trend is more towards the less realistic looking wider cars running foams and 17.5 unrestricted.
My personal choice, and is by no means a race winning car, is my realistic Tyrrell P34 (1976 version), which now having made the house move I will be looking at racing indoors at the Ardent Raceway, which should now be only an hour away.

stulee666

At long last its finished yey!!!

hi guys just finished the new look jps on my f104x1 inc wheel covers and i'm actually happy with it??

Team Lotus

stulee666, so show us a picture!

terry.sc, you may be right about the dimensions of the Serpent car. It just looked in that one picture I saw like it was too wide, and some others had suggested that it would likely be similar to the Corally; so having seen that picture, on first blush, I thought it was that way. I'm glad to admit that I may have been wrong; and I'm glad that Serpent didn't go the way of Corally.

I'm surprised that we here in America seem to be more interested in "scale" F1 racing than the folks in Europe, according to NiMo. I would have thought it would be the other way around. Interesting.

jake95

iTrader: (27)

hi,
i just picked up a new f103 15th aniversary i wanted to know what wings and body should i get for it as ive seen quite a a few diffrent types of bodies and wings what would you recomend.
thanks,
jake

NiMo

It is mainly the wide models as many of us have had the F103/F102 and even F101 models gathering dust in our lofts, and also the F109 was sold here at a very low price (only a 1/3 the price of an F104).
Also the pits tyres are not available here so many use the foams.
Don't get me wrong, the narrow cars do run in their own class, but just not as popular yet.

terry.sc

Japan has never stopped racing f1, so they have always used wide cars, and even though Tamiya stopped making them there were still a lot of Japanese companies making F103 size chassis.

Certainly here in the UK F1s used to be really popular all through the 90s with many race series being run and many of us have old F1s from back then but nowhere to race them as there was no supply of F1s for newcomers.
F1 came back in the UK thanks to the release of the 3Racing F109, suddenly we had a car that was readily available with a plentiful supply of spares at a reasonable price. The F104 Pro was very expensive and parts were difficult or impossible to get. The F109 was available for £95 while the F104Pro cost £240, so a no brainer which car to buy.

F1 in the UK is an indoor class, so it's somewhat easier to race on foams, especially as rubber seems to be all about having the right rubber tyres or you are uncompetitive while the kit F109 foams are cheap with lots of grip. This has obviously driven the rules towards foam and wide cars as that is what we were already running. Even those running outdoors used the F109 kit foams with a set of Superions for wet weather use.

In the US the rules seem to be driven by UF1, which runs outdoors and has decided to run narrow cars on rubber. US drivers seem to be buying cars to fit the rules, while over here the rules had to be formed based on what we were already using. We do run narrow cars on rubber in their own class, but in last years national championship it only got one entry for one round and I don't expect it to be that popular this time round either.

As for the use of the word "scale", the wide cars are just as scale as the narrow cars, just from a different era. This year we have named the two classes 'modern' for narrow/rubber cars and 'retro' for wide/foam cars to differentiate them, although we haven't gone as far as insisting narrow cars must run modern bodies and retro cars must run retro shells.

robk

iTrader: (22)

Actually, the rules in the US tend to be driven by the Tamiya series, since there was no other outlet for F1 besides the TCS until UF1 cropped up, and that's only in southern California. Tamiya was trying to promote the narrow cars.
UF1 did a great job by organizing their group of racers. It seems as though they decided they liked the narrow cars as well, despite having run the wide cars, too. Everyone who glommed onto their rules did so because they were very well done.