ok... i suspected it was that but not sure... btw i think kimi's helmet last year was cooler.... it seemed "harder" with the white... but also reminded me of Bergers helmet.

Ah, interesting. Does anyone remember that Eddie Irvine's helmet in F3000 was almost exactly the same as Ayrton Senna's. When Senna got wind of this he asked Irvine to change the design, hence Eddie's orange and green design.

http://www.legendsintime.co.uk/helmets.htm

Check them out... all pretty awesome.

I like the Senna of course but the Derek Bell, John Watson, Sheckter, hakkinen helmets have great designs.

It was meant to be orange with the Senna stripes, not yellow, but I was damned if I could tell the difference. His orange and green one was better than the leopard's bum one he had later.

Giambattista Busi in F3k also had a very Senna-esque helmet, yellow with two black hoops, I think, with similar pinstriping.

I have no idea. I figured he just copied the concept cuz he liked Cheever.

If Bruno makes F1 I really hope he reverts his design that of his uncles. As we know, the moment the black stripes are curvy on Bruno's lid, and the top is dark blue rather than yellow.

I 'm surprised no one has mentioned Sid Mosca who painted Senna's helmets......he has created some great designs .

I really liked Rubens Senna tribute helmet he used in Brazil 1995......it has a layer effect with Sennas design underneath.


http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/1280362.jpg...930FDCFC4C15FBB

http://www.sidmosca.com.br/galcapacetes2.htm#

I thought Schumacher's original design was really simple and great.
I don't think he needed to paint his whole lid Ferrari red.

YES. Like Alonso, the longer time goes on, the worse the design gets. Start with something simple, then it's "can we have a line here?", "how about a squiggle there?", "make this excitingly jagged"...

i think he switched from blue to red, as it was too close to rubens design, hard to tell who was who...

Simple, well resolved and was unmistakable.

I agree with your Alonso comments. I thought his original design, the one he used to win his first championship, was really elegant, colourful and stylish. His current lid is as ugly as the Renault's paintjob and design of the driver overalls.

I've often wondered what the real reason was behind Alonso switching to a black and white helmet for his season at McLaren. As we know, Hamilton also has a yellow helmet and the two would have looked very, very similar. I wonder if he was asked to change? (*This isn't an attempt to reignite the Hamilton v Alonso debate by the way, purely a point of interest. Does anyone know why Alonso changed to that black and white look?)

Sponsor pr£$$ur€, perhaps. His dark blue/Spanish helmet had been gradually becoming more Mild Sevenishly turquoise as time went on at Renault, and black and white fit McLaren grey much better. He said it was also a return to his karting helmet, but ISTR the only resemblance was the colour scheme rather than design.

But he'd always used the blue and yellow in Formula One and World Series by Nissan hadn't he?

I think it removed a large part of his identity last year.

For some reason, right from the outset, it made me subconsciously think he didn't quite fit at McLaren.

Speaking of identity, it was interesting to see what Christian Klien did once he split from Red Bull.

He's had a boring Red Bull lid for most of his career. When that sponsor was gone he had to come up with his own design and you'd have to say the result was pretty average. It looks like the kind of graphics that comes standard with an off-the-shelf motorbike helmet.

The Red Bull corporate helmet design is the worst for that IMHO.

There was a time when a drivers helmet was clearly visible and so a useful way of identifying them. There was usually some sort of story behind the design, and they changed very little over the years. Now the drivers are hidden away in their protective cockpits and sponsorship space is at a premium :\

Maldwyn, that looks like Ricardo Patrese in the picture beneath your name.

Now that was a great helmet design. A series of dark blue lines decreasing in thickness as they ran up the helmet.

Simple, stylish and distinctive. I was always a fan of Patrese and his lid.

Wow I checked out Eddie's Senna esque helmet and I was stunned. I can't stand Irvine, he's like the exact opposite of what I liked about Senna. It seems Senna was even influencing the drivers of his time. Wow.






Wow what a tribute, I love it.

Certainly is It's no coincidence that I like the simple, stylish and distinctive designs as well

I always loved Ricardo's design....it always reminds me of Devonware crockery .....a timeless classic..

luuuuuved this design .... used only once sad enough ,......... The Dutch Lion.

I think Christain Albers design is very original.



I also quite like Pedro De La Rossa's helmet. Nice colours and simple.

I always loved Liuzzi's helmet in F3000, before Red Bull started farting around with it.

Good to see it back to its orginal glory at Force India.

Jules Bouillon had a distinctive helmet in lower formulae, black with a white stripe and tricolour effect around the visor, but by the time he got to F1 he just used a copy of Ivan Capelli's. God knows why. Capelli's was a decent design but why scrap something individual like that?

Capelli's long time teamate in F1 Gugelmin had a very simple distinctive helmet design...

I do not like the Albers helmet design, but that doesn't really matter ....

I like it. It's original, has little colours and it's unique. The sponsors just don't fit.

Its a fair comment though. Albers helmet is original but not inspirational. I think its just different, however not the best by a long way.

Out of the current, buisier designs I think Alonso's manages to be detailed without looking a mess (unlike sutils). Also Hamiltons is nice, followed by Barrichellos classic, Kubicas (although he changes it too often), and Trullis. Nakajimas and Piquets are nice evolutions of their dads designs, if a bit buisy.

It would be nice to see a return of more simple, easier on the eye designs. I liked Arnoux, and Jones simple ones. Also others like Jarrier, Amon, Alesi (and DeAngelis which it was based on), Peterson, Nakajima sr, and the classics like Senna and Mansells.



Some just happen to fit with the cars colour scheme too...

Do you have link to his helmet or colours? Its very hard for us to share your thoughts if we have no idea what the helmet looked like.

Cheers

Bouillon's is here.

Capelli's is here.

The only difference is the thickness of the blue stripe on the bottom.

I don't have a pic of Bouillon in FFord, just that his helmet was like his F1 one, with black (or very dark blue) instead of blue, and the stripes in the middle being vertical, like the French flag, and pinstripes from them parallel to the dark bits.

They're both Senna knockoffs basically, though Senna's design wasn't terribly creative.

But why is a Frenchman running the wrong tricolor?

Senna's was a Derek Bell knockoff.

I really liked 2006 Kubica's helmet - red-white-checker-flag, the design based on his national colors and official air force symbols. simple, yet "telling a lot" to "those in the know":
(2007/2008 left, 2006 right)

[img]http://www.autosport.com/gallery/picture_free.php/dir/2007ita2/image/XPB_0XPNRPC0M40L1C0S0HDDS-2[/img]

That's a bit unfair to Capelli. His career was only a few years behind Senna's, and he's raced with the same design for all of his time in the junior catergories.

Always more attached at the past, I like best helmets liveries of '70-80's drivers. They were more simple, more eye-catching. In contrast, liveries of today seems to me so artificial and meaningless, drawed by marketing and design experts yes, but where is the soul?
My favourite is Ickx's one. Very elegant. I like also Hunt and Regazzoni ones. Or is it that I like these drivers?

Regga had three slightly different ones, the JEB's one is probably the best, and Dave Walker, Loris Kessel and Guy Tunmer all had very similar designs. Eddie Keizan also when sponsored by Embassy, but like some other South African drivers of the era he didn't have a single standard design and changed with his sponsor (his Lucky Strike sponsored helmet was red with a Lucky Strike-inspired white/green/black stripe). Ickx' design was an attempt to translate the pinstripe from his open face helmet to a visored helmet, Mike Beuttler had the same design but in blue and white. [/anorak]

OK, nerd alert, but it does bug me that Autosport magazine doesn't have the correct helmets for the correct drivers in their race reports.

For instance, the Massa helmet shown is that 'robocop' style Bell lid with the visor the moves directly outwards then up, rather than just up. It was used by him, Trulli, Button and Villeneuve in 2004. None used it into 2005.

Massa now uses a Schuberth, and has done since 2006 but the Autosport graphic sugguests he's still using the 2004-style Bell.

Heidfeld is also wrong (shows an Arai, he uses Schuberth), as is Rosberg (shows Bell, he uses Schuberth) and Button (shows the old Bell rather than the current model).

My favorites are: Massa, Heidfield, Alonso, Trulli, Burdais, Button, Kovalainen. I think that Piquet's would look better on an Arai instead of a Bell.

My top favorites!!





[img]http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/1280010.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF19390335F8FA9CA92A69686E9C3D204734F9930FDCFC4C15FBB[/img]

I like DC's the most. Hardly changed since he entered F1.

[img]http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/1280010.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF19390335F8FA9CA92A69686E9C3D204734F9930FDCFC4C15FBB[/img]

I like Kimi's the best. I also liked Fisi's Monaco helmet.

Yes, me too.
My all time favorite!




Jim

Asymmetrical, which is unusual.

Only in color.

http://www.caradisiac.com/media/images/col...cois_cevert.jpg

Currently being used by World Series by Renault driver Julien Jousse

[img]http://www.autosport.com/gallery/picture_free.php/dir/wsr2006test1/image/06195105_jousse_04-2[/img]

Very nice.

It’s already been mentioned but I always liked Elio De Angelis design, subtle and understated consequently I also liked Jean Alesi’s



Of the ones not mentioned so far Coulthard’s Colin McRae tribute helmet was nice

I guess I'm a wee bit old school !!

Today's helmets are a mish-mash of sponsor related colors, various homages and ..... ROSSI !!!
Good lord !! That face image helmet ???? I must be getting old !

When I raced, my helmet was black with two simple paterns, one green and one orange. It was neat, easy to recognise and very simply, ME !!

In yet another calender marking moment, Ross and I thought alike.

Out of those, Barrichellos looks the freshest as you can actually see a clear design; and his is probably the oldest design. Some other nice ones(Heidfeld,Alonso,Hamilton), but too many random designs, colours and gradients which make them look like a mess.

Nakajimas would be nice if he didn't have the small red, digital-like lines.

I prefered massas 06 design without the wavy lower yellow lines.

The worst are Glocks, and Sutils. Terrible.

It is a bit of a mess at the moment but it's an improvement over his anonymous McLaren one, I think. From a distance the colours work quite well. I like the playing cards, too.

I wonder if there's any significance in Bourdais wearing colours associated with the royal houses of France, rather than the republican tricoleur?