Blending his background: William Alatalo on his F3 helmet design

22 November 2022

William Alatalo has taken a unique approach to his 2022 helmet design. The Finnish youngster has only had a few designs since he started racing in Finland but the Jenzer Motorsport driver says he has found a refined design he loves.

Alatalo details to us what the meaning behind the design is and how the colours, camo and plans for a future special edition.

“I got a helmet that was pretty colourful, just the factory paint, when I was seven years old. I think we sent the helmet off to be painted when I was around 10 years old. It was just some colours on it to make it a bit personal. Then every three years, I got a new paint scheme done. The first one was black and kind of red-y orange mixed together with some white. The simplest of colours, it wasn’t a copy of anything, just our idea. We put it on the helmet and it looked quite nice.

“For this one, the inspiration is camouflage. I wanted a mixture of colours and we went with the camo design basically. On this side we have the Finnish colours of white and blue, then we have the other side of the helmet which are the Ethiopian colours which are red, green and yellow. We’ve mixed them together and it forms kind of a ying-yang style at the top of the helmet because I’m part Ethiopian and part Finnish.

"We mixed it up together and then I put my logo on the back. It took quite a long time to think about how we’d put it all together but I’m really happy with the design and it’s really personal to me. I really like the design.

“The orange, there’s no backstory to that, I just think it fits nicely and I like it as a base colour. Also we had those kind of orange and black colours in the helmet that I started racing with, so I’ve started to carry those from that helmet design. The main parts are the camo and the ying and yang meeting at the top. The colours meet up in the top. I’ve had the logo for I’d say four or five years. It’s just my initials.

“The colours and the idea of it came from me, I didn’t paint it or do the actual design but I had the input with the camo and colours on either side. I did quite a lot of work on how it should look but the designer finished it off for me. It’s the first helmet I’ve had where I’ve put some thought into it.

“It would be nice to do a special edition helmet design. I’d like to do one for Monza. My first F4 win was there. This one in particular is an Arai helmet and the painter is EVGraphics from the Eastern part of Finland.”