I am a racing manager at Bell Helmets, working with F1 drivers. My job is to prepare helmets for all of our drivers and try to find new ones, who want to use Bell helmets in Formula 1.
This year we work in F1 with Lewis Hamilton, Lando Norris, Kimi Raikkonen, Antonio Giovinazzi, George Russell, Nicolas Latifi, Romain Grosjean, Kevin Magnussen, Esteban Ocon, Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez.
We work closely with drivers on an individual basis to give them the best package possible regarding cooling and visibility. Plus we liaise with the teams, always trying to improve the aero package and make the car faster, even using small spoilers and wings on the helmet. We can even develop some aero parts together with engineers.
My race weekend schedule…
Usually I leave home on Wednesday night to make sure I’m at the track early in the morning on Thursday. Most of the time I carry up to eight of the drivers’ helmets with me, which we couldn’t send to the track with their teams for various reasons.
My first job is to prepare all the helmets for the weekend. Normally I would ready for each driver two helmets for dry weather and one for wet. If the forecast says it is going to be rainy weekend, I’d make it the other way around.
The two dry helmets have different visors, one of them is dark. For example in Barcelona when the sun is very low, you just cannot see the track properly with a normal one.