Benetton B191b

Martin Brundle

Brundle’s introduction to the Benetton team and the B191b came after several years on the Formula One circuit, having raced for Tyrrell, Zakspeed and Williams over previous sesasons, with some notable success.

Brundle was introduced for the start of the 1992 season at the Benetton Team, into a car which was a subtle development of the previous years B191 – a car that had seen a podium and race win under the pilotage of Nelson Piquet.

1992 was also significant for Benetton and Brundle as it was the year Ross Brawn joined the team, to run the teams engineering.

Brundel was unable to replicate the achievment of the previous driver, as the B191b was replaced after the third round of the ’92 season at Brazil. Brundle suffered retirement in each of those first three races.

His teammate – a young Micheal Schumacher – managed to take the car to two succesive podiums, before it was replaced with the infamous B192.

Recreating the B191b

This was my first foray in the world of 1/43rd scale modelling after purchasing two cheap kits from ebay.

I was quite excited about adding two cars to my collection, both of which I hadn’t seen available in a lager scale – but there was a catch; niether of the kits had instructions or decals. They were also bought ‘sold as seen’, meaning they might not be complete.

This particular kit, Tameo TMK 144, which is of the Benetton B191 driven by Nelson Piquet, was in good condition on arrival, less the decals and instructions. I then realised I hadn’t purchased Martin Brundles Car, but managed to source a set of decal for the later Bentetton B191b – which is essentially the same car, save a few aerodynamic modifications. A set of instructions was proving to be a little more tricky to source. All I could find were partial photos for both the B191 and B191b assemblies, leading me to believe this kit was quite old.

Still, after a little exploration and some comparisons, I figured out the only parts missing were the seatbelts, and one drive shaft – althought I may have misplaced that on opening up the box.

No instructions!

The kit went together well, despite the lack of direction, and I actually found it easier to put together than a plastic kit – but there was much to learn working with the white metal and brass parts.

Firstly – I learnt that cleaning parts before priming was imperetive to getting paint to stick to the model well. Also, how little glue you actually need to fix the small etched parts in place. This was a steep learning curve having never built a multi media kit before, but a very enjoyable one; I found that working with metal is much more forgiving that plastic, particularly when trying to achieve a good finish and fit parts.

Talking of finish, the only real issue I had was getting the larger blue decal to wrap the cowling well – as this was a conversion, the vents to the sides of the cowl weren’t exactly correct, which meant the decal didn’t cover some areas, so these were painted in using a matching colour before spraying the varnish.

Considering this was my first attempt at a 1/43rd metal kit, and that it was incomplete, I am very pleased how it finished up, despite the inaccuracies.