Standing out from the crowd: Christian Mansell on his helmet design

Every driver tries to make their helmet their own, but for Christian Mansell, he’s all about having an eye-catching design that matches his personality to a T.

The Campos Racing driver delves behind the visor to discuss his chrome canvas, his crusade against the ordinary and why he’s already got a to-do list in the making for his next revamped look.

“It’s made by Helmart Design in New Zealand. We co-created it, but he obviously did all of the painting and designing himself. In the simplest sense, I sent him an email and said ‘go crazy. Kind regards, Christian Mansell’. That’s how I ended the email and he came back with this absolute masterpiece. I was very, very pleased with what he did.

“It’s very colourful and busy, which I love, I’m always for a busy helmet. If I see the generic style of helmets, I think it’s a bit of a waste of an opportunity because it’s a canvas that you have your own opportunity to personalise and I think that’s a very beautiful thing in itself, so I take full advantage of that.

“My favourite part of the helmet would definitely have to be my name pattern on the side of the helmet in chrome. I’m a lover of chrome as you can see, the only part that isn’t chrome is that black to have as a base colour. We’ve got chrome blue, regular chrome and then a bit of gold chrome at the front. On the back it’s also quite busy which I love how the design weaves up and around. Then you’ve got a lot of things going on, the further you look into the helmet, the more you see, which I really, really like.

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“My favourite colour is blue, I’ve always loved it since I was a little kid, so I wanted to incorporate a lot of that into the helmet. I also chose chrome because I’ll be really honest, in photos it comes across so well, it just looks so good. I wanted to make it stand out as much as possible. The way I would design my helmet if it wasn’t already taken would be a bit like Dan Ticktum’s design. I love the loudness of it and how it correlates on track, but I would never steal another person’s design, so I made my own sort of adaptation to it. I’m really proud of it.

“In 2021, my helmet had a massive revamp and then in 2022, I went to more of a simplistic design. This is simplistic for me! I’m already planning next year’s helmet because I always want to change stuff. I always look at them a go ‘oh I wish I did this or I wish I did that’, so I have a little notes section in my phone saved as helmet designs. That’s something that I’m quite passionate about.

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“For my dream helmet, I would keep everything about this helmet the exact same, except where it’s black, I would have as an off-white. Then as a layer on top of that a cream white, so it almost looks like an off-white helmet, but keeping the chrome blue and the gold streaks. It would look off the charts! You can customise the interior with Bell Helmets so I would get blue and white on the outside, with white stripes and blue material inside.”