GL Racing Formula One

1/28 scale is an interesting scale to build racing cars at. The majority of clubs run Kyosho Mini-Z or more advanced cars by Reflex Racing, GL Racing, or a few other brands (Associated launched a full race grade car too). The majority of them are based on pan car designs. They have a split chassis with a motor pod on the rear and a main deck at the front. This usually means suspension for the rear is in the flex of the rear pod, and the front is covered by small springs either integrated into the wheel hubs or sometimes using shocks and tiny shock towers.

The GL Formula One (not to be confused with the GL F1) is not one of those designs. It uses a chassis and top deck arrangement more similar to a 1/10 touring car or buggy. It has a full gear box arrangement at the back and a fully functional independent shock suspension using rods and a pivot to get the shocks into the centre of the chassis just like a real F1 car. 

This was my first 1/28 scale full kit build (though I’ve worked on a few Mini-Z cars based on MR02 and MR03) so it was a bit of a learning curve. It goes together very well but working on it is definitely more complex than most  of the 1/10 cars that I’m used to building and working on. I had a few moments when a tiny piece fell off my workbench and had to tear the workshop apart to find it! 

The suspension really is a lovely thing to behold on a car at this scale!

Another very nice thing about this car is the very high detail licensed McLaren hard bodies that are available for the car. I went with the black and orange Lando Norris number 4 car, but have been tempted to grab an Oscar Piastri 81 car variant too, they do them in white and orange too and they also do the Senna tribute livery car that Lando drove too. I’ll probably run it for a bit but if I decided to race I would decorate my own Lexan body kit.

One negative of the detailed hard bodies is that they are very tight for space inside. The car is already tight on space for the electronics, but the hard bodies really are designed around using the GL designed ESC and battery your power unit (which it doesn’t explicitly mention in any of the documentation btw). I found this out after trying to fit the Hobbywing Mini28 ESC, which was about 1.5mm too tall on account of the connections being on the top edge. Even with the prescribed GL Racing ESC things are pretty tight and I had to resolder all of the motor cabling so that it pointed vertically down the side of the ESC.

The Lexan body kits look like they have a little more space inside so might just work with the Mini28. I’ll see if it fits when my Lexan kit arrives.

When that does arrive I’ll have to choose which F1 livery I want to copy. Thinking about Mercedes, Ferrari, Williams or maybe a reimagining of a mid 90’s livery; a nice yellow Jordan maybe... Decisions, decisions!

The kit also requires tyres for the lovely machined delrin hubs that come with the kit. These are specialist F1 wheels that have an outer lip for extra scale realism. Marka tyres seem to be the brand of the day here. They do look nice too. I also ordered some PN wheels too, which are designed for the style of flat tyres you’d see on a Kyosho Mini-Z, which PN also do. These are wider wheels and tyres than Kyosho supply too. 11mm on the front and 14mm in the rear. 

So now with all the right electronics in place (including re-soldering all of the cables to point downwards) it's ready for a quick run. 

My very first run before I re-soldered all the cables I found the diff to be way too loose, causing a lot of drivetrain slippage. I feel like the manual could be clearer in how to set it up. But tightening it is pretty easy so got it pulling away quite nicely. Now I just need to find a nice track to test it out on.