A Yellow helmet.  A Green and Blue stripe through the middle. It can only mean one thing. Senna.
Much like the great Brazilian driver’s design, helmet colour schemes have become iconic and synonymous with their drivers over the last 40 years of motorsport. In more recent years the tradition of being able to identify your favourite F1 driver during the intense heat of competition simply by the helmet has been further complicated by the trend of many F1 drivers having a new design for almost every race, although FIAs new rule has limited this! A personalised helmet design provides a driver or navigator the opportunity to stand out from the crowd. It’s a chance to have something unique and bespoke to the taste of the owner and reflect their personality along with doing the most important thing that is key to most drivers……..looking cool! Custom designs are also an ideal opportunity for a driver to give added exposure to a brand or sponsor; such is the prevalence and use of onboard camera footage in modern day motorsport at all levels. Many of the Red Bull and Monster Energy sponsored drivers wear helmets emblazoned with the corporate logos; Sebastien Loeb, Elfyn Evans and Ken Block being prime examples. Rally drivers and navigators have been getting their Stilo WRC DES helmets painted in large numbers, featured in our previous blog, with a major demand for both the Composite and Carbon variants of the WRC DES and ST5R to be personalised to each user’s unique style. But there is a lot more to designing these helmets than just putting a bit of paint on and applying a few decals. Here at Murray Motorsport, we are going to take a look at an example of a Stilo ST5F-N Carbon helmet that was designed and completed for Eoin in the run up to the Formula Ford Festival at Brands Hatch. The helmet was tailored to fit perfectly using different sized cheek padding. The custom designs can vary from the very simple to the very elaborate. For this aspect of the process; Miles Murphy of MDM Designs, worked closely with us on defining the colour scheme and design characteristics to provide a fully customised and bespoke design to meet Eoin’s tastes and requirements. Considering the various other demands being placed upon a driver, the decision on a helmet colour scheme is far from easy, almost up there with their anti-roll bar settings and spring rates! Working with Miles, Eoin decided on a design incorporating the Green, White and Orange of the Irish flag, while still incorporating aspects of the original carbon look. Following some fine-tuning and adjustment, the design is agreed upon and forwarded to Piers Dowell at PDP, based in the UK. Piers has vast experience in this field, having painted well in excess of 3000 helmets, including top drivers such as Petter Solberg, Mark Higgins, Gwyndaf Evans and the trio of Top Gear presenters, not to mention custom guitars and motorbikes.  The helmet was shipped directly to Piers impressive workshop, which boasts a specialised spray booth and low bake oven. You can see from the images on the right just how much detail goes into painting a helmet. First the design is plotted out by hand by Piers onto half of the helmet, then scanned and redrawn as a 2D representation on the computer. This 2D drawing gets turned into a plotting diagram to be cut out of adhesive material through a special plotter. Then the areas that are to left as bare carbon are covered and the helmet gets a white coat. All the white pinstripes are then applied and shortly after, the flourescent orange. The green is then applied and all masking tape removed and ready for first coat of clear. The final result of this was this beautifully finished helmet and a highly satisfied Eoin. Regardless of the motorsport discipline, the helmet is still the most crucial piece of equipment you can invest in, but why not make it truly your own and unique to you and your tastes. This process is available for all helmets across our range. For further information on Piers and his Airbrushing service please visit http://www.piersdowell.com/ and examples of Miles’ designs visit http://www.mdm-designs.co.uk/. Thanks for reading! Tommy.