ligierjs11

In 1977. In the JS7, Laffite won the Swedish Grand Prix. This was the first win by a French team in a car driven by a French driver in a French car with a French engine since the World Championship started in 1950.

The Swedish win was a little fortunate but in 1979 it was a different story. The team changed to Ford engines and built the ground effect JS11 with it’s distinctive aerodynamic shape on the upper surface of the rear the bodywork.

Teams were still trying to understand and harness the benefits of the ground effect principle, even the Lotus team with it’s Lotus 80 were struggling in 1979, but the JS11 was the class of the field at the beginning of the season.

Laffite won the first two races and his team mate Patrick Depailler won the fifth. Unfortunately the momentum was not continued as the season progressed and the new Williams FW07 and the Ferrari 312T4 both allowed their respective teams to overtake Ligier leaving them third in the constructors championship by the end of the year. Laffite managed fourth in the drivers championship.

I managed to get a close look at the car itself at the Goodwood festival of speed and there’s a good photo of one of the later versions with a closed in engine at this web site. http://www.brooklands.org.uk/Goodwood/g98_10.htm

I found this kit to be much more difficult to construct than some of the later Tamiya kits, for instance, it was almost as if Tamiya new there would be problems with the exhaust manifold construction and have offered two versions of part number C44. A20 is an alternative part which would make the manifold a little bit longer allowing a better fit of the engine into the engine bay.

I mixed Humbrol gloss colour 48 with some 14 which is a darker French blue in order to try and match the colour of the bodywork. For some reason I ended up with an instruction sheet in Japanese so I had to use my best judgement when constructing the kit.

Another mistake easily made is to place the decals with the red pinstripe onto the removable cowling before checking that the red pinstripe lines up with the stripe on the panel just in front of the engine. When the cowling has finally been dropped down into place a red pinstripe should run from back to front without a break or a step. As can be seen from the photo on the web site, the bodywork looks like one complete moulding so a clumsily placed decal ruins the overall effect.