The FIA has just released a rule that will ban mid-season helmet design changes. The rule will take affect for the 2015 season and will prevent any driver from changing their helmet livery. This will prevent special designs, such as Nico Rosberg’s FIFA World Cup design. This rule will govern all of the drivers, but Sebastian Vettel will be most affected by it. He has had over 50 designs in his career.
The FIA has stated that the new rules are meant to keep stability so that viewers can more easily identify the driver of the car. This is absolute rubbish. Firstly, if you are at all interested in a driver or even Formula One in general, you will get a rough idea of what helmet the driver will be wearing in the race, even if they change it all of the time. Secondly, this is an unnecessary measure, as drivers are already identified by their onboard camera. Section 21.1 of the FIA regulations states: “In order that the cars of each team may be easily distinguished from one another whilst they are on the track, the on board cameras located above the principal roll structure of the first car must remain as it is supplied to the team and the second car must be predominantly fluorescent yellow.” Therefore, it would not be required to have a specific helmet in order to be identified. Not to mention, the cars already have numbers that are clearly visible. It is also worth mentioning that FIA hasn’t taken any actions to ban similarly coloured helmets or those with similar patterns. This too could potentially make it more difficult to distinguish between drivers.
In my opinion, the real reason that the FIA wants to ban mid-season helmet changes, is so that they don’t have the same issue as they did last season. Last year, Nico Rosberg designed a helmet to celebrate the victory of his home country, Germany, in the FIFA World Cup. The helmet features the German flag colours and an image of the FIFA trophy. The helmet design experienced a lot of legal issues from FIFA and the FIA was put on the hot seat. This appears to be the FIA’s goal with these new regulations. They want to be able to have one approved scheme so that they won’t get into trouble having to approve changes in a short notice.
