The Spanish story behind Brad Benavides' helmet design

Brad Benavides talks us through his helmet design and how a trip to a Spanish town with his family made a lasting impact on his career and personal life.

“2016, when I really started racing, my helmet was completely different to the one I have now. Completely different colours with yellow, orange and then black and green. So it was a different colour combo.

"Right now I race under a Spanish flag but since I was born in the US, I identify myself as more American than anything else. So I went with the red, white and blue combo, I have a little bit of pink at the bottom, but that was just to give it something a bit cool.

"My helmet painter is CF Design, I have two other helmets I’ve painted with him. He’s always done these triangle contrasts on the dark blue with light blue, so that’s the only thing that I could say that all my helmets have had since 2016. The design was done by him. The other thing that might stand out is the ‘BB’ bit at the top, all of my helmets have that, it’s my logo. The glitter on the triangles are also something that I’ve had since my first ever helmet. It sort of looks like a disco ball.

"I also have my family slogan in Spanish: “Un león por armas tengo y Benavides se llama.” It means ‘A lion I have as a weapon in Benavides’ name. Benavides is actually a little town in Castile and León province in Spain, really close to the city of León. I remember I visited there for the first time ever when I was 12 with my dad and my grandpa and we went to the city centre in town. In the market there was a wall that was painted with the Ferrari logo, in Spanish it’s called ‘un escudo’ which means shield, and it said “un león por armas…” That was something when I saw it, it looked cool.

"It's something that my family lives by since that moment we first saw it. We took a photo of it and actually sent it to paint, we have a painting of it in my house. It’s been a slogan I’ve been putting on my helmets ever since.

"Then we have the sponsors, main one is Weban, which is my dad’s company. It’s a cryptocurrency, gold back tokenised currency. Then we have the Road to Success which is my management team and then my name.

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"I think if I ever raced in Miami, hopefully next year, I would do like a complete American flag. Or maybe in Barcelona next year as well. It's probably the track where I've raced the most since I live here and I really did a lot of it and this is a track with all the preseason tests. Maybe a little bit of a Spanish flag for a special helmet in the future.”