[Keith Collantine]

Sebastian Vettel was wearing a special helmet with flashing LEDs on top during practice at Singapore today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrR0I7Tjb6c

Apparently the lights arrangement on top is different constellations of stars.

[damonsmedley]

Ted Kravitz said on Sky that they are the constellations attached to his siblings & parents’ birth dates. Awww…

[Carlitox]

Now that’s something new :O really love it.

[celeste]

I love this helmet… is really cool and nice tip about the constellations @damonsmedley

[matt90]

Almost as gaudy as when Hamilton had one covered in diamonds.

[dot_com]

Wouldn’t it be slightly distracting if that was flashing in your mirrors? You’d almost expect a siren to accompany it.

[James_mc]

Well, I am impressed! I was scathing of the “helmet to mark yet another helmet design design” of the other week – a self-importance piece of ego-feeding.

However this one is just excellent! Top marks to Vettel!

An aside – I wonder how this works with respect to the structure of the helmet? (Or indeed driver safety etc., has been noted above the distraction of it!)

[Kingshark]

Finally a good new helmet for Vettel!

[Pelican]

I’m kind of stunned – I wonder how it looks on the racetrack. wrt the structure and safety, the LED’s, battery, and wiring are probably pretty tiny, so it could just sit on top of the outer functional layer, and it wouldn’t be too expensive to crash-test the whole set-up. I think I read that the diamond helmets were for show only, because to use it in a race, they would have to be strength tested diamonds and all.

[Altrim]

cool

[Adam Tate]

That’s awesome. People knock Vettel for his antics, all the helmet designs, the dreaded finger, but at least he feels comfortable enough to show off his personality. It adds a bit of character and light hearted fun to the series. Plus LEDs are just cool. They are already set to be the future of every conceivable type of lighting, but for someone to stick em on a helmet is definitely inspired.

[Prisoner Monkeys]

Congratulations, Sebastian. You’ve somehow managed to make your helmet designs even tackier.

[BrawnGP]

The problem is that its powered by redbulls KERS… so it won’t last a whole race…

[robk23]

From what I saw in FP2, the LEDs are on top of the helmet and then the top design is a layer of vinyl (or similar) which goes over the top of the LEDs. The top of the helmet was bumpy so this clearly has no effect at all on the structural rigidity.

[Abidal]

Nice helmet, i think this is start of that helmet’s in f-1, or something like this.

[Author]

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