Silverstone 1991 Diorama – Part 4 – Tyrrell Honda 020

The third vehicle in this small convoy is the Braun Tyrrell Honda, as driven throughout the 1991 season by Italian Stefano Modena, and Japan’s Satoru Nakajima. 

The reference photo that I had been working from wasn’t all that clear, but a close look revealed that the car was that if Nakajima, so with that in mind I was able to start work on the kit. 

 

 
The kit was exactly as one would expect from Tameo; a straightforward quality build straight from the box. 

  

The biggest challenge to placing the car in the intended seeing related to the driver figure. In the past I have painted the driver’s helmet by hand (with some success), but in view of the fact that the three other drivers in the scene had all been finished with decals I was concerned that the Nakajima figure would not compare favourably if I painted it by hand. I therefore scoured the Internet looking for some decals that would do the job. 

I considered trying to print my own decals (either by printing to laser printer decal paper, or trying to have some custom decals screen-printed), but was keen to try an avoid this out of laziness!!

Finally I was able to source some decals from Museum Collection through eBay:

With the decals ordered, I was again (like the Ferrari) able to assemble the driver figure from 2x separate Denizen figures. Having done this, I was able to paint the figure, having found some reference images through Google. 

 

The helmet was primed and painted gloss white using Halfords spray cans, and the Museum collection decals applied. They conformed nicely to the curved surface with some Microsol decal softener, and a quick coat of Tamiya gloss clear maintained a nice gloss finish. 

With the driver installed, all that remained was to install the wing mirrors and aerials to the front of the car. 

All in all another very pleasurable Tameo kit.