Rocket science for your head

By Jason Wolf

Published: August 17, 2008

Bruce Porter plucks the Carolina blue and white motorcycle helmet with team owner Michael Jordan’s Jumpman logo off a small table fan. He plops it shield up on a rubber ring in front of him.

About 20 variously brightly colored helmets surround this friendly middle-aged gentleman, Arai Helmet’s director of racing for North America, as he stands under a tent in the paddock during the Suzuki Big Kahuna Nationals at Virginia International Raceway. One helmet is silver and has a big blue Dallas Cowboys star on the side. Another has a flaming phoenix painted on a part.

A crowd descends on Porter’s position by the podium, undoubtedly intrigued by the attractive artwork.

“Obviously, we think of the helmet as the premier piece of protective equipment to save the rider’s life in a bad accident,” Porter said, “but in this environment it’s also a performance piece of equipment.”

He quickly applies clear plastic film — known as a tearoff — to the surface of the Jordan helmet’s shield. Another employee covers one of the helmets with his apron as the most recent race winners spray champagne on the crowd.

IT’S WET OUT THERE

Riders deal with a tremendous amount of moisture while on the track, in the form of perspiration.

The suits they wear are in most cases made of cowhide and on the high end are composed of kangaroo skin, which is about a third lighter. Either way, the suits are very warm and riders invariably sweat a lot.

Nearly all of the tracks where the American Motorcyclist Association’s various pro racing series compete are also used for automobile racing, Porter explains. He’s been servicing helmets in road racing environments for nearly a quarter-century — he started by working out of the back of a minivan, using the fold-up door for shade.

“You take a big heavy automobile with a big contact patch and a wide tire on a hot day like this with big brakes, you start pushing pavement toward apex and you get these little, almost invisible ripple bumps that are created by the cars,” Porter said. “You take a motorcycle with a really short front suspension and compress all that suspension on the brakes coming through those little tiny bumps, it’s like a drumroll — blblblblblblb — and when you compress your forehead into the front of the helmet, if you haven’t dried it correctly, the sweat runs down the inside of the face shield. Now you can’t see at all.”

A huge chunk of taking care of riders’ needs is spent drying out their helmets, hence the small table fans. Porter pulls out the liner, pulls out the cheek pads and goes about removing every last bit of moisture. Only then does his focus turn to the face shield itself.

“They take care of it for you,” rider Reno Karimian said. “They change the tearoffs. They clean it out. They service it.”

SEE?

Across the spectrum of professional motorsports, if there was a single common denominator besides the fact that the participants are world-class athletes, they all have “superman vision,” Porter said.

“And we need to offer them the greatest opportunity to have that vision so they can do this job to the best of their ability,” Porter said. “As soon as you can’t see well, it’s really hard to go to work and run 180 to 200 mph on a lap-to-lap basis, certainly safely.”

Windshield wipers on helmets are of course out of the question, so racers utilize a system of very thin, clear plastic tearoffs that fit over the shield, which is periodically replaced. The plastic film is mounted on the helmet in a manner so that a rider, after riding through fog or catching a piece of soft tire to the face, can reach up and remove a layer to restore a greater level of clarity. The ends of each of the plastic tearoffs are, after being installed, cut at opposite angles and reinforced with tape to provide a better grip.

“The rider reaches up and pulls one side free, and the wind removes the tearoff and pulls the second tab out,” Porter said. “It’s a pretty simple process and it’s proven to be very, very effective for us over the years.”

How many tearoffs used per helmet and what thickness is utilized partially depends on the time of year but is even more contingent on a rider’s velocity. Porter is installing two 5mm tearoffs on each of the helmets used for Superbike racing, a thickness that withstands speeds of 200-210 mph and is used all the way up to MotoGP. Porter can apply a maximum of three 5mm tearoffs to each shield.

On a half-mile dirt track, as many as 12 in a 2mm thickness are utilized and are good for around 100 mph. As many as six tearoffs in a 3mm thickness are used on a mile-long dirt track and work up to 140 mph. There is also a 7mm thickness, good for about 225 mph, used by Formula 1 or Indy Racing League drivers.

There are 18 drivers in the world who compete in F1 racing, which is widely regarded as the pinnacle of motorsports. Twelve wear an Arai-brand helmet, Porter said.

A STRONG BELIEVER

Ryan Elleby landed straight on his head after a really big high side coming on the front straight at Laguna Seca last year.

“It was pretty much a classic faceplant,” he said. “Ever since then I will wear no other helmet, just because I know it works really well. That’s about as hard a hit as you can get.”

The basic concept of a helmet is designed around energy management — “it’s an energy management tool for your head” — Porter explains. A helmet is designed around a hard outer shell, the responsibility of which is to take the energy of an impact and displace it over a broad surface. The expanded polystyrene liner — the softer inner liner utilized in Arai helmets — is designed to absorb that energy as it passes through the shell.

“It’s a fairly simple process but incredibly difficult to create a really, really good example,” Porter said. “The technology behind them is what I like to refer to as rocket science.”

Arai, which was founded in 1937 and is the world’s oldest helmet company, invented and has been utilizing the fiberglass helmet shell with the EPS liner — the current technology — since 1952. And the company’s helmets are routinely tested well beyond the industry standard of two big hits, Porter said.

“We’re fond of dropping these a lot,” he said. “We drop them four times.”

SCUFFLESS WORKS OF ART

The helmet is considered to be a potential billboard for many product sponsors, but riders frequently have their gear custom painted.

The great majority of helmet graphics worn at VIR this weekend are painted at any one of about a dozen high-end studios located across America. There also is a team of designers and “a really incredible paint studio” at Arai Japan, the parent company where helmet production takes place, Porter said.

Elleby’s oddly designed yellow and black helmet flows with his other racing gear — the yellow matches his boots and really stands out.

“My mom likes it because she can see it,” he said.

Karimian likes the tiny Japanese lettering on his Arai-issued red and black helmet, which he receives for free by having the company as one of his sponsors. He has a Romanian flag emblem affixed to another helmet he owns.

“It’d be cool to have a (custom) design,” he said, “but that’s extra money, you know. I don’t want to spend it on that.”

Arai likes to maintain an attractive graphic that encourages consumers to purchase their helmets from the standpoint of how beautiful they are, Porter said. He picks up Monster Energy Kawasaki rider Jamie Hacking’s black and green helmet, with the energy drink’s logo largely emblazoned on each side.

“This is really the trend in helmets these days,” Porter said. “The energy drinks have brought a lot of money into our sport, and we’re a little more open in trying to help them from that standpoint – because it’s good for this sport.”

As the horde of people surrounding the winners at the podium begins to thin, many folks stop at Porter’s tent to check out the helmets. Some begin to take pictures.

“I’m kind of like the bearded lady at the circus. You didn’t really come to see me but you stopped by,” Porter said. “We have a tendency to draw a pretty big crowd. People are interested in what we’re doing here and it gives us a great opportunity to talk with them about how important it is to wear a quality helmet.”