Retro specials showed F1 what it's missing

It is all too easy when Formula 1 hits historic moments such as its 1000th race - and then struggles to mark it with a thrillfest - to put on some rose-tinted spectacles and talk about how it was better back in the old days.

While F1's landmark event in China last weekend will not go down in the history books as a standout grand prix, it's unfair to think F1 is not as good as it once was just because a single race could not live up to highlights from the previous 999.

We need the boring races to make the exciting ones stand out. The same is true of football. Five-four thrillers stand out because sometimes there are nil-nil draws. F1 will again move on, this time to Baku. The street circuit will throw up the usual chaos and create big talking points. Life in the F1 garden will be rosy again.

There was one aspect of F1 thrust into the spotlight in China that showed where it has gone wrong in recent years, and where it was 100% 'better back then': helmet designs.

The 1000th grand prix landmark provided the perfect opportunity for drivers to do something special with their helmets, and a host of them made changes to mark the historic moment.

George Russell opted for a half-Juan Pablo Montoya tribute; Alex Albon honoured Prince Bira, while drivers including Romain Grosjean and Sergio Perez added the 1000th GP wording atop their helmets.

But it was Renault duo Nico Hulkenberg and Daniel Ricciardo who stole the show with two unique retro-themed designs that earned universal praise from paddock members, media and fans. With a brief to do something 'old school', helmet artist Jens Munser came up with two brilliant concepts.

Scan back over some historic F1 pictures and what made the older helmets work was that they weren't complicated

Ricciardo's grey-and-black helmet was modelled on Jack Brabham's colours with some unique tweaks such as the painted-on stone chips to give it the vintage feel.

"I left it with Jens," said Ricciardo. "I said 'just do something old-school, something that maybe means something for me' but I let him surprise me. That's what he came back with, it was really nice."

But it was Hulkenberg's yellow and black design that really stood out. Perfectly minimalist, it featured the old Renault, Schuberth and JMD logos, with the 1000th race being celebrated with a Roman M on the back. To add to the vintage feel, Hulkenberg's race number, name and the other lines were all as though painted by hand to give them a non-perfect feel.

The helmets proved so attractive because they were bold, uncluttered and had straightforward colours. Simple was best. What these two helmets highlighted was how the current crop of designs have lost their way.

Rewind the clock a couple of decades and a drivers' motivation in choosing his helmet colours was having something that was instantly recognisable. Ask any serious fan to draw a racing helmet and they will have little problem in coming up with a decent reproduction of what Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, Nelson Piquet, James Hunt, Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve and Michael Schumacher wore on their way to title glories.

And best of all, from a fan perspective, each of their designs (even though Schumacher changed in his Ferrari years) was recognisable from several hundred metres away as they flashed past at 150mph.

For some unknown reason, the current trend is for drivers' helmets to have as many swirling patterns, design swoops, colours and funky tweaks as possible. The helmets have become too similar.

In contrast to being able to easily draw the helmet design of many long-retired F1 drivers, I think many would struggle to accurately recreate what any of the current grid is wearing from memory.

Yes, we can recognise them in the cars - Valtteri Bottas's blue in the Mercedes against Lewis Hamilton's red for example - but that's as far as it goes.

Ayrton Senna's long-time helmet painter Sid Mosca once suggested that drivers should be more recognisable with their helmets on

If you took away the sponsor logos from each of the helmets, only the most hardcore of fans would recognise every helmet out there.

The over-complication of the current crop of designs has made them less unique: as the host of swoops and curls have all moulded together so that very few designs actually stand out or mean anything.

Scan back over some historic F1 pictures and what made the older helmets work was that they weren't complicated and had basic colours: because that is all that was needed.

Two or three colours maximum was plenty enough to make it clear who they were, and it stuck in the memory.

Even if you were not religiously following F1 at the time, it's easy to look back at images from races many decades ago and instantly recognise drivers such as Stefan Bellof, Chris Amon, Ricciardo Patrese, Rene Arnoux.

Right now there is a lack of standout identity for a lot of the helmets - although some like Kevin Magnussen's do a decent enough job. But in 20 years time, will we be able to scan back through images from last weekend's Chinese GP and recognise most of the drivers simply from their helmet designs? Unlikely.

Yes, it was quirky when advances in technology allowed drivers to regularly do something different with their helmets - remember Sebastian Vettel's flashing lights in Singapore? - but equally, F1 has lost something by not having that emotional attachment between helmet colours and the driver.

That's been further hit by the halo, which has made it more difficult to spot the driver's helmet from outside the car. You can argue that its design is even more important because they are even harder to see.

Maybe the fanfare that Hulkenberg and Ricciardo's helmets got in China will have served as a bit of food for thought for drivers about what they should be doing with their helmets - and perhaps inspire a bit more 'old-school' thinking about what makes a good design.

Senna's long-time helmet painter Sid Mosca once suggested that drivers should be more recognisable with their helmets on. Is that the case now for a majority of the grid? It's sad to say, but the answer is no.