You may have realized that Jenson Button used a different helmet at Silverstone during the 2008 British GP. He used special helmet designs for his home Grand Prix before but this time he had fans to design it for him on his website.

Here is the winning design by Aries Janssens:

Photos: Honda Racing F1

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Monaco GP has some history of special helmets and liveries. Here is recap of four special helmets I noticed this year - the diamond helmets of McLaren drivers, Monaco flag and track map helmet of Nelson Piquet and 200 race anniversary helmet of Giancarlo Fisichella.

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Rubens Barrichello celebrated his 257th F1 race in Turkey. Giancarlo Fisichella will celebrate his 200th Grand Prix start in Monaco. He is only the ninth driver in history to reach that milestone. His total does not include the 2005 US GP, when along with the other Michelin runners he withdrew on the formation lap. It also does not include France 2002, when he had a major crash in practice and did not take part in qualifying.

Here are few photos (courtesy of Force India F1) including the photo of his special Arai Helmet bearing ‘200′ logo (more pictures in the article):

Giancarlo Fisichella 200 Anniversary Helmet

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The teams keep rolling out their new cars and the F1 drivers are coming up with their 2008 helmet design. Here they are:

Raikkonen, Massa

Hamilton, Kovalainen

Heidfeld, Kubica

Alonso, Piquet

Rosberg, Nakajima

Webber, Coulthard

Glock, Trulli

Barrichello, Button

Bourdais, Vettel

Sutil, Fisichella

Sato, Davidson

Fernando Alonso seems to be getting away from McLaren days and returning to Renault even with his helmet design. Jarno Trulli reduced the shiny silver surface with more red colour over it. Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica keep the designs very close to their 2007 styles.

Kimi Raikkonen’s new 2008 helmet (click here) is very similar to his 2007 one, but the white front has been replaced with some sort of “tribal” drawing. Anyone knows what it means ?

Lewis Hamilton keeps his yellow helmet pretty much unchanged. Heikki Kovalainen had to make changes to accomodate new sponsors the result is Alonso 2007 like helmet. Bourdais keeps his Champ Car yellow and blue with the addition of Red Bull brand.

Both Honda and Red Bull drivers keep the same designs as in 2007. Sutil’s helmet does not look too different from his 2007 one as well. Fisichella is another guy sticking with his traditional colours.

Please check back for updates to this post with more on 2008 F1 driver helmets. It happened before that drivers used different design for the winter testing and came up with brand new one when the season started, so these may not yet be the definite 2008 helmets.

If you come across good pictures of new 2008 F1 driver helmets that are not yet displayed here, let me know. I will add them here !

To see what the drivers were wearing in 2007, check here

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Sometime the helmets the drivers use during the testing season are not the same than those they enter the season with, but this one looks like a keeper. Alonso’s new helmet is a return to his previous Renault design and an obvious escape from his McLaren days helmet.

It also displays 2 ace cards on the back to mark his 2 world titles.

And here is the updated version as seen at the Renault R28 launch, sporting logos of his new sponsor:

I like this Alonso’s new helmet more that his 2007 one.

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There are only days to go till the 2007 year is gone and over for good. Let’s have a look at some interesting things that came by during this year in Formula 1.

I start with the helmet of Rubens Barrichello. His usual red and white helmet is what all of us have known for years. So I was quite surprised to see him wearing a black one during the free practice in Monaco, during the 2007 Grand Prix.

But then I saw him an hour or so later during the qualifying and he was back wearing his usual white and red one

Well, it was the same helmet all the time, but painted with the thermochromic pigment. The cooler the weather (or Rubens’ head ), the darker the helmet. Here are few shots of Rubens I made during the 2007 season with different color of his thermochromic helmet:

In a cold temperature during wet Monaco practice the helmet color turned almost black. The red parts are visible only as shadows.

Warm sunshine in Shanghai - crisp white colour.

And something in between. The winds that brought the rain later on in Shanghai cooled the air and Rubens’ helmet darkened a bit.

Nick Heidfeld also used similar temperature sensitive paint on the top of his helmet this year.

To see all the 2007 Formula 1 Driver Helmets, click here or check the helmet tag on more helmet articles.

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Let the pictures do the talking:

Honda got rid of the Earth livery and painted their car all white. Their last winter interim livery was all black…

Force India got rid of the orange Spyker color. The interim livery of the Force India F1 team does not remind me of neither Holland nor India … But Kingfisher is on the nose

The ugly logo that we spotted on Mallya’s shirt during Brazilian GP is on the car, it looks like it is going to stay…

And Michael Schumacher found some inspiration in Kimi Raikkonen, look at his updated helmet and compare it with 2007 Kimi Raikkonen’s helmet (click here)

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To better recognize the new Williams boy on track, here is the helmet of Kazuki Nakajima:

And this is how the helmet looked in action 2 weeks ago in Shanghai during Friday practice:

Check here for all the 2007 Driver Helmets

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The Polish portal www.f1.v10.pl brought images of the new helmet design that Robert Kubica will use in the final race of 2007 season - Brazilian GP. The new helmet is a work of the Italian house LuckyDesign. Gone is the red and white color scheme reminescent of the Polish flag. The new design is a combination of black and shades of grey (silver), with red lines. It all comes in matt finish.

Robert Kubica used another special helmet design earlier this year in Monza at the Italian Grand Prix.

Here are all 2007 Driver Helmets and several Test Driver Helmets

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David Coulthard’s helmet in Colin McRae’s colours for 2007 Japanese GP

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