Friday 10 June 2022

GP4: Helmets from 2022 Spanish and Monaco GPs

Spanish GP


Carlos Sainz 2022 Spanish GP helmet

Designed by Dave Designs, Sainz ran this special helmet at his home race. It has a nice blend of shiny and matte with different reds and blues, similar in tones to his normal race helmet, but with a more obvious Spanish influence along the middle and top of the helmet. 


Sebastian Vettel 2022 Spanish GP helmet

This is not really a special helmet as such as it's reverting back to his normal helmet. "Back to basics" was the word from Jens Munser Designs, as he wore this helmet at both Spanish and Monaco Grand Prix. 

Monaco GP

Sergio Perez 2022 Monaco GP helmet

Sergio Perez catapulted himself into championship contention with a win at the Principality and a nice contract extension to go with it. A nod to Mexican racing legend, Pedro Rodriguez, nicely put together by MDM Designs and painted by Uffe designs, it was nice to see a special helmet do well. 


Valterri Bottas 2022 Monaco GP helmet

Valterri has been having quite a season, quickly shedding his wingman reputation and freely showing the world his bottom, his girlfriend Tiffany has turned his regular helmet red and white, a nod to the Monaco flag, as well as having all the corner names underneath and a picture of a secret wine cellar on the back. All that and it's topped off with Casino based graphics. Thankfully, I had the base helmet down, so it wasn't too much trouble to put this one together. 


Pierre Gasly 2022 Monaco GP helmet

Pierre Gasly likes to go gold for Monaco, this year with an exceptionally shiny version. As with the management of reflections in GP4 handled by the alpha layer, it does tend to work better with a dark base texture and a lighter alpha layer. Together, they shine nicely in game, and in the tunnel. 


Charles Leclerc 2022 Monaco GP helmet

I'm grateful for Charles' simple but effective helmets this season, designed by Adrien Paviot and this takes the normal helmet and it's turned red and white like the Monaco flag. A promising weekend unravelled on race day, the luckless Monagasque will have to wait another year to try and win his home race. 

Kevin Magnussen 2022 Monaco GP helmet

Magnussen, emergency replacement at Haas this year, essentially ran his old 2020 helmet at the beginning of the season. He had been gearing up for some IMSA racing and there were designs for that helmet by Adrien Paviot showing the design. That design has now made it onto his F1 lid, and Paviot says the Dane will be running this helmet for the rest of the year. 


Lewis Hamilton 2022 Monaco GP helmet

There were jokes going around about Hamilton's white helmet bringing back memories of the Stig from Top Gear. I'm sure the sponsors were not best pleased by their logos almost camouflaged. Hamilton invited artist Daniel Arsham to apply his amethyst on an eroded helmet effect onto his helmet design. Unfortunately there arent' particularly good photos to go off, particularly on the right side of the helmet, so I've done what I can. 


Lando Norris 2022 Monaco GP helmet

Finally, we have Lando Norris' helmet. I like a good asymmetric design, and this is trying to mesh vintage with modern. The old Bruce McLaren style simple helmet design on the right, with a sparkly edition of his standard helmet on the left, separated by the Monaco flag. In reality, it meant I had to design two helmet really, but thankfully there are good resources from MDM Designs that really helped me to recreate it accurately. 


Sorry for the delay in this blog post, the helmets have actually been available for some time, but I hadn't had time to create the previews and write up about them. In addition to the helmets above, I have amended Schumacher's Miami GP helmet, which he's worn ever since, now that I have better photos of it. 

Thanks as ever to Jvinu for his helmets, and of course these are compatible with ACSPRH helmets in other games.