It was sometime in the early 6th Century that Bodhidharma, the 28th Patriarch in line from the Buddha, traveled by boat from India to South China. He tried in vain, upon landing, to establish the teachings of Zen. After his failure, he moved north and settled in the Shaolin Castle. Now, at last, his teachings started to take hold and Bodhidharma came to be known as the first Patriarch of Zen in China.
This is also why a design of the Shaolin Castle decorates the helmet of Bettenhausen Motorsports driver Patrick Carpentier, who himself is a student and practitioner of Zen.
“The castle is like a calm place, and I like to be calm inside the helmet,” he explained. “When you’re calm, you think clearer.”
“Oh, I don’t know if you can name a first one. Knights probably had something on theirs,” says Troy Lee, who has been designing racing helmets for 16 years.
But Graham Hill, the great British driver and world champion in the 1960s, generally is credited as being the first. His dark blue helmet was decorated with the broad white panels of the London Rowing Club and this look became as well-known as his considerable skills.
Now everyone competing in the PPG CART World Series has a look. When they run the U.S. 500 Sunday at the Michigan Speedway, each will wear a helmet that is part billboard, part personal statement and part a grand reminder of Dennis Rodman’s body.
“The helmet is part of a driver’s identity,” said Team Rahal’s Bryan Herta. “It separates the human part of the sport from the mechanical.”
“It’s your symbol,” added driver-owner Bobby Rahal. “People recognize you in your car by the helmet before anything else.”
“Your helmet is your signature,” said Tasman Motorsports’ Andre Ribeiro. “During your career you change your sponsors, your cars, your engines, your whole image of yourself. The only thing that is your personality is your helmet.”
That is clear looking at Ribeiro’s helmet, which includes a portrait of Our Lady of Brazil. She is the patron saint of his native country and after he won last year’s Rio 400 there, his mom gave him a portrait of that saint for good luck.
The pineapple, another symbol of good fortune, is on the helmet of Target/Chip Ganassi’s Alex Zanardi, and above and below both sides of Carpentier’s visor is woven the lucky number seven.
Nowhere on Carpentier’s helmet is the color green. To him that color represents hope, but to race track traditionalists it represents bad luck. The reason for this belief has been lost in the mists of history, yet its hold was strong enough that Carpentier’s boss, Tony Bettenhausen, bans it. When Stefan Johansson drove for him last year, Bettenhausen even made him change the lucky shamrocks on his helmet from green to blue.
Still, to prove how personal all this is, green is on Ribeiro’s helmet in the flag of Brazil.
“I don’t believe in the superstition,” he says of his defiance.
Defiant, too, is Parker Johnstone, who is in his first season driving for Team KOOL. His helmet still includes a huge white star and swatches of red, blue and gold, which were all part of his original design. But now dominant is the color green, which is there for obvious reasons.
“It’s a concession to KOOL and gladly so,” Johnstone said. “I wanted to keep my original design and incorporate green in it, and they said sure. If sponsors truly understand the individuality of the sport, they understand the driver has to have his own identity.”
Christian Fittipaldi’s helmet often bordered the edge. Once, some years ago, it included a computer chip that looked as if it were drawn up by some drug-crazed artist. It was there to tell all that his mind was working like a computer. Once, more recently, it also included giant, lime-green teardrops. They were there to honor a family tradition.
It was a tradition started by his father, Wilson Jr., himself a racer who wore a helmet decorated with triangles. One day a friend approached him, suggesting a modification: Change those triangles to teardrops, which he claimed were the most aerodynamically perfect shape in nature.
Then–before the start of the 1996 CART season–he hooked on with the Lincolnshire-based Newman/Haas Racing team. Co-owner Carl Haas is notably conservative when it comes to his drivers’ helmets and the computer chips were history.
Then Budweiser, one of that team’s primary sponsors, declared those lime-green teardrops clashed terribly with their familiar red so they became white.
“Big sponsors can be pretty strict, really,” said Lee, whose creations can cost up to $2,000 (on top of the $800 cost of the helmet itself). “They put millions of dollars into it, and have to have limits on where their logos go. They usually want a real clean area around their logo.”
Jimmy Vasser’s dad was a drag racer in Southern California. This is why, even after he hooked on with Target/Chip Ganassi, he wanted those flames that traditionally decorate dragsters as part of his helmet’s design.
“Flames on an Indy-car helmet?” Lee said when he heard this. “No one ever has done that before.”
“Yeah. I don’t know,” Vasser said. “It is pretty corporate out here.”
“But we tried it,” Lee said, “and he liked it. Then he won a few races and said, `Let’s go for more.’ So each year the blue (flames) gets darker and darker.”
Vasser took a personal interest in the look of his helmet, and this is true of almost all the CART drivers. They might draw on family tradition or some other part of their past, on a sponsor’s demand or a strange superstition, yet always the aim is the same–a look that is both singular and personal.
Michael Andretti, Fittipaldi’s Newman/Haas teammate, fashions a design once worn by his dad, Mario. He has augmented it only with an American flag, which he added in 1993 when he drove in Europe on the Formula I circuit. Adrian Fernandez wears a design he came up with while idly doodling 13 years ago and Gil de Ferran wears one he drew up while bored in school at age 14.
Rahal’s is patterned after that of former Formula I driver Carlos Reutiman, against whom he once competed, and Greg Moore’s includes a checkered flag, which every competitor hopes to take. Scott Pruett’s design includes all the colors of his main sponsors and Mark Blundell’s, for quite different reasons, includes the colors of red, yellow and blue.
“The yellow,” he explained, “is nice and cheery, the blue is conservative and the red is firey. There’s a bit of all that in me.”
And what of the words “Will to Win,” which are written across the back of his helmet?
“That,” he said in a most singular and personal statement, “comes from my late grandfather. He always was instilling those words into me. So when he (died), it was just a commemorative motto.
“There’s not much emotion in our game. So it’s just something personal, and a lot of people know me by that now.”
Troy Lee is a good friend of Marlboro Team Penske’s Paul Tracy and each week, even during the racing season, they talk.
“Paul is probably the most creative,” Lee said. “He always says, `I want to do something wilder than everyone else.’ He’s always telling me, `I love it when people talk about my helmet.’ “
That’s why the initials of Tracy’s name are on his helmet in 24-karat gold and why the top of that helmet is finished in metal flakes that change colors when hit by the sun.
Truly, that is also why Troy Lee can say, safely and finally: “We don’t set limits. If there’s something new to do, Paul wants to know about it first. His helmet is his little jewel.”
