A bucket’s a bucket, right? How much could the racing helmet have possibly evolved? A lot, as it turns out, and Donut Media is here to illustrate the extent of it.
The video crew known for its Evolution series has done its latest on the development of the racing helmet over the years, from the earliest days of motorsport through to today.
Those earliest coverings were nothing more than cloth designed to protect the driver from nothing more than flying dirt. (Not a lot of paved roads or tracks back in 1908, don’t ya know.) Hard shells came after the War, and were being mass-produced by the mid-50s.
Along the way, racing helmets adopted escalating levels of eye protection, fire retardation, full face masks, and their designs grew more and more involved.
By now racing helmets feature aerodynamic elements, air supply systems, and drinking straws, have radio communication systems built in, and are affixed to massive neck restraints to prevent whiplash and help drivers cope with the tremendous forces at play.
The bottom line is that they’ve evolved so extensively that we doubt the drivers from the early days of racing would even recognize them as having stemmed from the flaps they wore.