Inside the meticulous process of creating Verstappen's cutting-edge F1 helmet

Precision is everything. The giant cutting plotter draws lines, cutting triangles, trapezoids, strips of different lengths and more intricate pieces – some of which resemble squashed earthworms – out of dense fabric. Every millimetre counts. The plotter’s programme is designed to ensure every square metre of material produces as many useful pieces as possible. Waste is kept to a minimum.

“These materials are very expensive, around 150 or 160 euros per square metre,” explains Schuberth Performance CEO Alberto Dall’Oglio, the ‘employer’ of this impressive machine, which is busy cutting out hypometric pieces and ‘worms’ from a roll of carbon fibre, to GP Racing. Here, in the small Italian town of Schio, about 70 miles west of Venice, Schuberth creates the high-tech protection equipment which cradles the heads of three current Formula 1 drivers, including reigning champion Max Verstappen.

“There are a very limited number of materials on the market,” Dall’Oglio adds, “and most of them are taken up by Formula 1 teams and
 the aerospace industry, so we almost have
 to fight for them.”

The material in question is T1000, one of the most sophisticated and expensive available, used by F1 teams to build the monocoques of their cars. The cutting machine is five steps away from the fridge, since T1000 is as capricious as it is expensive – and must only be stored at around minus 15-20 degrees.

As delivered, the resin-treated carbon fibre is protected on both sides by a thin film. Alberto picks up one of the strips and releases the black fabric.

“As soon as you take it out of the fridge, the material starts to activate,” he says, as his fingers start to stick to the piece of fabric. “So we have to be careful and quick. From that moment on, the material is free, which means it starts to be sticky, like glue. The longer you leave it out, the more it becomes like chewing gum.”

The T1000 carbon fibre used in F1-calibre helmets has to be treated at around minus 15-20 degrees, then must be worked on quickly

Photo by: Schuberth

Speed has to be tempered with precision in the following stages of manufacture because this product is destined for a rarefied clientele and has to conform to stringent quality and safety requirements. The 8860:2018 ABP standard Formula 1 helmet is the most durable, intricate and therefore expensive helmet produced – not just in Schio, but pretty much anywhere in the world.

Once a complete set of elements for the future head protection device has been assembled – a total of 95 such carbon fibre pieces per helmet – the collection is given a serial number, which contains all the information about which roll of which batch of fibre it was made from as well as when, and is sent to another fridge, one of those in the lamination room, which is another 10 steps away.

A decade-long mission

As we enter what Dall’Oglio calls “the heart of the company” he asks us not to take any pictures. All of Schuberth’s F1 secrets are kept in this football pitch penalty-area-sized room. It took Alberto’s company 10 years of research and development to perfect the recipe of the aforementioned 95 pieces, which not only have to be precisely shaped, but also placed in a certain order – with millimetre precision. All in order to pass the FIA’s latest crash-test regime, which came into force in 2019. Schuberth tested hundreds of prototypes in the year leading up to the switch to the new helmet standard – until it finally found the structure that would enable it to pass the toughest exam.

"Imagine you take a bowl and a piece of paper and you try to wrap the paper around the bowl – it will be full of wrinkles, right? Because how do you take a 2D shape and turn it into a 3D shape? That’s where it took us 10 years to find a solution" Alberto Dall’Oglio

That’s because F1 helmet manufacturers had no one else to learn from, as no other industry has the need for carbon spheres the size of a human head. In parallel, three other manufacturers – Arai, Bell and Stilo – have followed a similar path, and each company’s technology is now valuable intellectual property.

“You can find this type of lamination room at Lamborghini or Ferrari, for example,” says Alberto. “But you won’t find anyone laminating on a spherical shape. And that’s where our expertise comes in. Imagine you take a bowl and a piece of paper and you try to wrap the paper around the bowl – it will be full of wrinkles, right? Because how do you take a 2D shape and turn it into a 3D shape? That’s where it took us 10 years to find a solution.”

There are eight people in the room, all wearing white dressing gowns. It’s not cold, but still a little chilly in the workshop: the temperature is a compromise between facilitating human comfort and calming the carbon fibre’s predisposition to stickiness. Each of the workers is assigned to his or her own helmet.

It takes one person at least five hours – almost non-stop – to painstakingly assemble the jigsaw of carbon fibre in the right order in a specially shaped bowl. Here, too, millimetre accuracy is crucial: every nook and cranny must be fitted into the shell, layer by layer, in strict accordance with the instructions. The sticky cloth pieces, which the Schuberth employees take out of their refrigerators and free of protective strips, start to adhere to each other when placed in the bowl-shaped tool.

Assembling the helmet is a meticulous process involving five hours of non-stop work

Photo by: Schuberth

To achieve the necessary strength, there are several layers of carbon fibre in an F1 helmet, with the thickest area at the front. It’s called 8860:2018 ABP for a reason, the last part standing for ‘Advanced Ballistic Protection’. The new FIA standard was prompted by Felipe Massa’s accident at the Hungaroring in 2009 – and it took a decade of rigorous research for the helmet manufacturers, working with the FIA, to develop helmets capable of preventing injuries like the one suffered by Massa.

The temporary solution was an additional cover at the top of the visor, but the new standard stipulates that the shell itself must be able to absorb such impacts. In Schuberth’s case, the front section of the F1 helmet is the thickest at around eight millimetres. That’s 19 layers of carbon fibre. A standard F1 helmet is made from about five square metres of raw material.

The ultimate challenge is to achieve a sufficient level of durability without making sacrifices in terms of the size and weight of the helmet, which is essential for driver comfort.

“Sometimes we have drivers or teams tell us, ‘Oh, this helmet is 30g heavier, what happened?’ 30g!” exclaims Dall’Oglio.

“People here have to be extremely precise,” he adds, “and it’s not easy because you’re basically staring into a black hole. After a certain number of hours, you start to lose a bit of focus. So we keep them busy with handwriting: they have to mark every step they take in the checklist to keep everything under control.”

Again, there’s no university where this particular technique is taught. To be ready to start assembling helmets for F1, Alberto says,
 a person needs at least a year’s training.

Ready, steady, cook

Those helmet-shaped bowls in which the Schuberth specialists place the carbon fibre are also manufactured here and made using carbon too, on aluminium billets. Metal tools are only used to make the carbon moulds, but not to bake the helmets themselves.

“We start with the aluminium tool, treating it like a mirror,” explains Alberto’s colleague Luca Menin. “Then we start laminating the carbon layer on top of the aluminium, so in the end we get a carbon tool that is much lighter than an aluminium tool and has more positive points.

The helmets then have to be put into an autoclave

Photo by: Schuberth

“First of all, it’s the same material that we’re going to use for the shells. So we have the same thermal dilation, the same shrinkage, the same compatibility between the two materials. Aluminium certainly has a different behaviour when it gets heated or cooled down, and it’s just not a very good way to work – because carbon shrinks less than aluminium, for example, so the aluminium tool can squeeze the carbon shell and cause some micro-cracks.

“What’s more, when you put the aluminium tool in the autoclave, you have to wait three
 to four hours for it to cool down once you take 
it out. With the carbon, it’s only 10 minutes. 
So it’s easier to handle and it’s quicker. But
 the main advantage of it is that the behaviour 
of the material is the same.”

Like the helmets themselves, carbon moulds are also cooked in autoclaves, but with special technology because each of them will need to go into the furnace a few dozen more times.

“It’s harder, it takes three days to cook in the autoclave,” Luca says. “It’s cooked in a different way. If the helmet takes about four hours to cook, this tool takes three days of cooking. It’s a long process: let’s say, about 80 degrees for 10 hours to start with, then a different temperature for a day, then lowering the temperature again, and so on. It’s a secret recipe, there’s been a lot of trial and error, but fortunately we have very experienced men here.”

Resin and temperature will do their work, and what looked like a ball of fabric a few hours ago will become the strongest part of the helmet, which, according to Dall’Oglio, will not break even if an agricultural tractor is placed on top of it

Towards the end of the lamination process, two carbon moulds will have to be screwed together and sent to a further station, where 
they will be wrapped.

“Basically, we have to enclose the tool and take the air out of it,” explains Dall’Oglio. “It’s a very important step, even if it doesn’t look very technical or complicated. But it makes all the difference. If you don’t do it right, the resin will flow away and you’ll have defects.”

Future helmets are wrapped in three different layers of packaging. First comes a simple Teflon film, then a special cloth to prevent any mechanical damage, and finally a vacuum bag from which the air is evacuated after sealing. Once fully wrapped, future helmets will go into the autoclave to be heated to exactly 126 degrees.

“It’s like a big oven,” says Dall’Oglio, “but with pressure. Inside the tool there is a vacuum, a negative pressure, and outside the autoclave creates a positive pressure. The two together create the bond between the layers.”

Resin and temperature will do their work, and what looked like a ball of fabric a few hours ago will become the strongest part of the helmet, which, according to Dall’Oglio, will not break even if an agricultural tractor is placed on top of it, despite the shell itself weighing just one kilo.

Once out of the autoclave, with the material properly knitted together, the helmet is exceptionally strong

Photo by: Schuberth

The moment of truth

As we watch the freshly baked shell being removed from the tools, Alberto says: “Every time it’s like opening a present, because you don’t know what’s inside. You do your best to make sure you get what you want, but you never really know.

“From what we can see now, this is a perfect one, but then we’ll go under the light to try and spot if there are any very small defects. Definitely this one looks quite promising.”

The tightly controlled methodology of the manufacturing process means just 5% of the shells emerge from the autoclave with defects, but not all of these are immediately obvious. Just a few metres away is the quality control station where, under the light of a dozen lamps, Schuberth specialists check no damage has occurred during production.

The last step is to cut the holes for the visor and ventilation: the famous Schuberth gills at the chin and the small holes at the top and back of the shell. Like the initial cutting, this process is entrusted to a robot. A huge water-jet cutting machine has its own room – because it’s quite noisy. The water stream it produces makes the holes with perfect precision.

“These machines work at 3800 bar,” Alberto shouts over the machine. “So, just to give you an example, if you put a 10cm-thick piece of metal in there, it will cut through it.”

By comparison, the average domestic pressure washer you might buy to clean your car or patio would emit water at ‘just’ 140 bar.

Of the three thousand or so carbon helmets produced in Schio each year, only a few hundred are made to the 8860:2018 ABP certification. The market price is up to eight thousand euros although Formula 1 drivers get theirs for free, because for Schuberth – as for other manufacturers – the F1 project is more of a marketing tool. If you want a helmet like Verstappen’s, there is only one place to go.

This is just one stage in the process. The shells from Schio destined for F1 are shipped to Salzgitter, Germany, to designer Jens Munser, who paints the helmets for all three of the company’s current F1 drivers. Once Munser has worked his artistic magic he sends the newly painted shells to Schuberth’s headquarters in Magdeburg, where the padding, lining, straps and visor fixings are attached.

This is the responsibility of one of the company’s longest-serving employees: Sven Krieter worked with the Schumacher brothers in the early 2000s, back when the Schuberth name first imprinted itself on the public’s consciousness thanks to its association with Michael’s astonishing run of world championship success. The product itself may have changed massively since then, but one significant connection to F1 history remains…

All Schuberth helmets are inspected for any imperfections

Photo by: Schuberth

How F1 helmets are tested

To achieve 8860:2018 ABP certification a helmet design has to meet 14 stringent impact and flammability benchmarks. The manufacturer must keep records enabling the ‘key materials’ (including the liner and the energy-absorbing materials, fibres and resins) used in each production helmet to be traced. Every year a random sample must be re-tested. The FIA documentation laying out quality requirements and testing regime runs to 38 pages.

During the testing process each helmet is subjected to different temperatures to simulate potential storage conditions as well as various extremes of weather. Three different tests measure the resistance of the shell and the deceleration of the driver’s head when dropped on a selection of different anvils at set speeds.
 In the standard frontal evaluation, the driver’s head must decelerate by less then 275G in
 an impact of 9m/s.

The penetration test requires a 4kg impactor to be dropped on the helmet from a height of 7.7m; the so-called advanced ballistic test involves firing 225g metal projectile at the reinforced forehead area at 250km/h

Ballistic tests are then used to check resistance to objects hitting the helmet; this is the key element introduced in response to Felipe Massa’s accident at the Hungaroring in 2009, when a spring detached from the rear suspension of the car in front and hit Massa above the left eye. The penetration test requires a 4kg impactor to be dropped on the helmet from a height of 7.7m; the so-called advanced ballistic test involves firing 225g metal projectile at the reinforced forehead area at 250km/h.

Other tests crush the helmet and chin guard (separately), ensure the HANS device mounting points are strong enough and check the surface friction characteristics. Helmets must also self-extinguish after being exposed to a 790C flame…

The contents of this bag has to undergo stringent tests to be deemed F1-worthy

Photo by: Schuberth