Driver Helmets 2015

[spinmastermic]

... It would be nice if the rule would allow for this, but how could it? You can't say, for example, "helmets have to stay within 107% of the original design;" it's impossible to quantify in that way..

Two tokens per 50% of the helmet.

Double helmets for last race!

[poolboy67]

Dear FIA. I hereby present to you the solution for easier driver identification:


surely this cannot be too high-tech for a series that's trying to be the absolute peak in automotive technology?


i kid you not, FIA has become almost like a stupid goverment that just bans everything as a solution, instead of finding what's the actual cause of things and making an intelligent change to it.

kinda like Finland's goverment is "solving" alcoholism by banning positive commentry of alcoholic beverages in the social media. it's just madness.

[Manoah2u]

Finland's goverment is "solving" alcoholism by banning positive commentry of alcoholic beverages in the social media. it's just madness.

offtopic but SAY WHAT? that just made my day [even though that's sad]

anyway you're right tho, we're having almost completely sponsor-empty cars and it's rediculously hard to spot which driver is which at times.



let's look at this one then:



and these



then there was a time where we saw that you could identify the driver of the team by the colour they put on camera pods [or in some cases a nose tip]

Jos Verstappen [yes that's not actually him in the first pic, but it was his car lol]





vs

Mika Salo





[btw i still really love this 97 tyrrell]

Yellow accents vs Red accents to clearly differentiate. Would work for ANY car. Even a full yellow or full red car would be identifiable because one of them has a clear yellow pod or a clear red pod.

what happened to this feature? why is it no longer around?

[gary123]

Checo switched to schuberth after trying it a week ago.



And Lewis tried againg the Bell yesterday at the end.

[Harvey]

Yellow accents vs Red accents to clearly differentiate. Would work for ANY car. Even a full yellow or full red car would be identifiable because one of them has a clear yellow pod or a clear red pod.

what happened to this feature? why is it no longer around?

You do realise that the T-cams are now coloured black or yellow now? How is this any harder to spot than red or yellow?

[Manoah2u]

Yellow accents vs Red accents to clearly differentiate. Would work for ANY car. Even a full yellow or full red car would be identifiable because one of them has a clear yellow pod or a clear red pod.

what happened to this feature? why is it no longer around?

You do realise that the T-cams are now coloured black or yellow now? How is this any harder to spot than red or yellow?

my bad, i did not recall well whether they were colored, i though they were all black nowadays.

then sorry but why the hardness in distinguishing?

* dam, just checked that rosberg-nico shot, didn't even notice the top cam was yellow in nico's case. feel like a fool now.

so....how come it's so difficult to distinguish then? shouldn't the commentators simply look at the top cam? * ill admit though i might answer my own question becuase i failed to spot the top cam yellow on the second driver car*

[Lheela]

Yellow accents vs Red accents to clearly differentiate. Would work for ANY car. Even a full yellow or full red car would be identifiable because one of them has a clear yellow pod or a clear red pod.

what happened to this feature? why is it no longer around?

You do realise that the T-cams are now coloured black or yellow now? How is this any harder to spot than red or yellow?

I guess what he was trying to say was that you could expand that feature beyond the T-cams. For example Toro Rosso painted the onboard cameras on the nose with the red/yellow color according to the T-cam in the late stages of 2009.

I also think that teams could do more to differentiate the cars, like McLaren in the late 90s/early 2000s (Häkkinen had black decals on the front wing, Coulthard red ones) or Benetton/Renault up to 2010 with the red nose tip on the "first" car.

Some ideas would be:
Mercedes: Hamilton gets a white area on the airbox, with black sponsorship (so the area behind the driver matches the helmet)
Red Bull: Stripes on the sides and on top of the cockpit made yellow on the second car
Williams: colored sponsorship on the second car (maybe in martini colors)
Ferrari: Black wings for the first car (one can still dream), maybe yellow accents
McLaren: Well, since the MP4-30 looks like they didn't car, I won't care either.
Force India: One car with orange accents, one with green ones
Toro Rosso: They added gold and red stripes anyway, one gets red the other gold
Lotus: One car with beige/creme (whatever that non-gold color is), one with more red
Sauber: Same as McLaren

I think those would make the cars easy to tell apart, but in isolation each car would look "complete", so no one would see a car and think: "That car got feature A, B and C, that's clearly the #2 driver!"

But why bother making the grid look actually cooler when you can ban helmet designs.

Also: Finish up the business with the permanent numbers first. A driver should be allowed to design his number to HIS liking, not the team's liking as it stands. The numbers will likely not become iconic if they look different each year, because the teams changed the font or whatever. If a drivers designs his number in bright green and silly font, let it be bright green and silly font, even if he's driving a Ferrari. THEN it will stand out and become iconic. The design of the number could then be fixed for maxbe 5 years, and after that slight changes would be allowed.

On Topic:

Hamilton: looks very busy, too many ideas in one design
Rosberg: didn't change?
Ricciardo: Red Bull, w/e
Kvyat: Red Bull, w/e
Massa: modern classic, very cool, clashes a bit with the martini branding
Bottas: very cool, but the "swirly bit" on the top ruins it for me
Vettel: Ok, I wished he kept the lines of his old design on the top, maybe in a shade of silver
Räikkönen: Ok
Alonso: Ok, still a bit busy for my liking, still liked his '05 design better
Button: Ok, still liked his "classic" Union Jack design (up to the start of 2010) better
Hülkenberg: would be better if the lines were straight
Perez: the silver looks a bit odd on an otherwise colorfull helmet, but it's still ok
Verstappen: Red Bull, w/e
Sainz: Red Bull, w/e
Grosjean: looks as if he tried too hard to make it look "cool"
Maldonado: improved, since it's not as busy as before, still room for improvement
Ericsson: good, simple design
Nasr: design is pure gold, but gets spoiled a bit by the form of the helmet itself

[Jonnycraig]

Dear FIA. I hereby present to you the solution for easier driver identification:
https://www.sportvision.com/sites/defau ... ters_4.jpg

surely this cannot be too high-tech for a series that's trying to be the absolute peak in automotive technology?


i kid you not, FIA has become almost like a stupid goverment that just bans everything as a solution, instead of finding what's the actual cause of things and making an intelligent change to it.

kinda like Finland's goverment is "solving" alcoholism by banning positive commentry of alcoholic beverages in the social media. it's just madness.

Something similar to this has been shown, at least on Sky, when showing start replays etc.

[SilverArrow10]

Dear FIA. I hereby present to you the solution for easier driver identification:
https://www.sportvision.com/sites/defau ... ters_4.jpg

surely this cannot be too high-tech for a series that's trying to be the absolute peak in automotive technology?


i kid you not, FIA has become almost like a stupid goverment that just bans everything as a solution, instead of finding what's the actual cause of things and making an intelligent change to it.

kinda like Finland's goverment is "solving" alcoholism by banning positive commentry of alcoholic beverages in the social media. it's just madness.

Something similar to this has been shown, at least on Sky, when showing start replays etc.

Its not the graphics its the bright coloured unique numbers pasted on the cars for all the world to see. Rather than the numbers just being a tiny part of the cars livery

[poolboy67]

well i've never had problems recognizing which driver is which, cause of the t-cam colour. but i guess some people do.

so. here's my suggestion (and i'm actually with FIA's original proposal of side numbered cars)

put that on the RW end plates, as only 3 teams have more than one sponsor there anyway.
this would also work for singapore and bahrain since they can be seen even if the rest of the car glares like mad in the lights.
i hear it's as light as a similar size piece of cardboard, so no worries there either.

this is what the FIA should've enforced. 'cause if you can make out the drivers from their helmets alone, then you should just as easily spot the different driver from the t-cam colour too. so the new helmet rule is absolutely pointless.
i mean, what if both drivers want to use similar overall helmet colours? pfth... just stupidity from FIA and Todt. takin the dumb way out.

and i've never heard, apart from Martin Brundle, complaints about not being able to spot the driver.
this whole thing came out of nowhere and is simply pointless, useless and unneeded.

oh and about that Finland's alcoholism thing. it's totally true you know.

[Manoah2u]

not a driver helmet for a f1 racer,

but this is positively the best helmet i've ever seen.

[MarkedOne8]

Kimi / Seb / Esteban

[Miguel]

I read somewhere it was the teams who vetoed big bad shiny numbers in their cars. Thus, the FIA banned helmet changes.

Puhhleaaase, it's not like the teams have a zillion sponsors now.

[poolboy67]

I read somewhere it was the teams who vetoed big bad shiny numbers in their cars. Thus, the FIA banned helmet changes.

Puhhleaaase, it's not like the teams have a zillion sponsors now.

yup this is true. but the teams actually wanted to retain all available room for potential sponsors, not just current ones.
the side of the car really is the the most visible, and most pictured. so it's also the most expensive spot for sponsors.

haha. i just had an idea;

make this big enough and slap a number on it.
problem solved! #FIAlogic.

[xDama]

I read somewhere it was the teams who vetoed big bad shiny numbers in their cars. Thus, the FIA banned helmet changes.

Puhhleaaase, it's not like the teams have a zillion sponsors now.

I thought the teams protested against an extra winglet for a digital car number? I remember a team testing out the solution last year, but I can't remember the team.

Anyways, I don't get al these idiotic decisions. I agree with the fact that it isn't easy to recognize a driver these days, but just like poolboy67 suggests: there's a freaking ton of tv-technology available to give the viewers an easy recognition of every driver. Hey, maybe they could even spice up the tv-interface so you'd actually be able to follow the race in detail, instead of a static bar with the standings.

But I'm giving up hope for the FIA/F1 to come up with such 'radical' and modern sollutions. Last couple of years they're really proving their worth in the creative thinking department.