A tribute to his father and an F1 Icon: Fernando Barrichello on his Special Helmet Design

Fernando Barrichello had a new look for the final rounds of the season, as he raced with an eye-catching new helmet.

Blending his own design with his father, Rubens, the Brazilian paid tribute to the multi-time Formula 1 race winner. We caught up with him to talk through it all, including the emotional moment he did the big reveal.

“It's a big dream come true for me to be honest. Obviously watching my dad growing up who had such an iconic design that he had always worn since he was a little kid.

“I always wanted to create a place for myself. But I always knew that at some point I really wanted to honour him and pay respect to everything that he's done. I had been thinking about it for a long time, thinking of how I exactly I wanted to do that.

“His helmet is the way it's supposed to be. You can see that the bottom is his helmet and mine is sort of on top.

“What I wanted to show is that his helmet has always been on the bottom, and mine is just a layer over everything.

“Obviously, everything that I know and believe in this sport, especially the passion that I have for it, has come from him. So it's an honour to be able to do this but just to show that he's always been under everything.

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“I did a big surprise. He had no idea and he didn't know that this was going to happen, and so when we got together, I showed it to him.

“It was a very emotional one to be honest. I got it on video, so it was really nice. It was really nice to see how surprised he was and just how happy he was. Obviously telling him this was really nice, so it was a special one.

“It's pretty cool in that sense. To be honest, like I said, I've always wanted to do it, but the window never really came about too much.

“Arai sent me a new helmet mid-season so we could have a second one here, and it was right around the time where he drove his Ferrari at the Red Bull Ring. I saw it there and everything was sort of aligning for it to happen.

“I felt like that was a really good opportunity, and then it was, to be honest, a good couple of weeks with the people from Infinity.

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“We were thinking and doing a bunch of different designs. We thought of many different things and I wanted it to be as special as possible. So we really thought about every single design possible.

“I'm a bit of a pain, so I do have to apologise to them, but the result came out exactly like I wanted it.

“I've jumped in the car with it for the first time to do radio checks, and there's a little mirror on top of the steering wheel, and I can see myself. It was really special.”