Ayrton Senna - Helmet Design

Helmet Design

In his karting days, Senna's helmet consisted of a plain white background with notable features absent. He experimented with several designs to satisfy him such as a white, yellow and green helmet before settling on a design that included a yellow background with a green stripe that surrounded the upper visor and a light metallic blue stripe surrounding the lower visor (both stripes are delineated in the other stripes color) that was first seen in 1979 with the design having been created by Sid Mosca who also painted helmets for Emerson Fittipaldi and Nelson Piquet. According of Mosca, the blue and green stripes symbolised movement and aggression. The helmet never had significant changes, apart from sponsorship. One such change that was Senna would occasionally alter the stripe from green to black. The tone of yellow changed a number of times, while usually a rich sunburst yellow, in 1985 and 1986 in some races he used a fluorescent neon yellow colour. In 1994 the helmet was a lighter, paler yellow to complement the blue and white of the Williams car. He used a number of helmet brands throughout his career. From 1984 to 1988 he used Bell, from 1990 to 1991 Honda's own Rheos brand, 1992 to 1993 he used Shoei and for 1994 he returned to using Bell.

Variant designs

His nephew Bruno, currently racing in Formula One, bears a modified version of his helmet design (a yellow helmet with a green and blue stripe), but the stripes are shaped after an S rather than being straight, under the chin area it has a green stripe and it has a blue rounded rectangle in the top area. Bruno sported a modified helmet design for the final three races of the 2011 season to honour the 20th anniversary of Ayrton winning his last world championship. At the 1995 Brazilian Grand Prix, Rubens Barrichello incorporated part of Senna's helmet design into his own. For the 2011 Brazilian Grand Prix, another variant of Senna's helmet was used by Lewis Hamilton and Barrichello. Hamilton used the design with permission from Senna's sister Vivane with the helmet being sold off in support of the Insituto Ayrton Senna foundation.