F1technical.net

Shumi uses a seperater between his nose/mouth and his face shield to keep his shield from fogging up. The vent on top is a cooling feature that introduces new/fresher air into the nose/mouth area. He uses these as safety features so he doesn't have to pop his shield open in the wet/during pit stops.

My question is:
1.How does a driver breath when their face is cramped in a helmet???
2.Mika Hakkinen's helmet in the 2001 Malaysian GP has some special plastics attached on it...how does it works???
3.As you can see, Raikonenen's helmets happens to have little "horns" facing backwards on each side,what is its purpose??

Breathing....well they breath like normal human beings. it isn't that hard...I race and it's natural the helmet doesn't influence you in any way.

The 2 horns work like this....the high speed air moving on top of the helmet creates a lower pressure system on top of the helmet....the air in side the helmet is at a stand-still (low speed high pressure) so the pressure gradient will suck the air from inside the helmet. There are small chanels inside the helmet the help to cool down the drivers head....

What plastic thing on mikas helmet...? I can't really remember! could you post a pic?

I think the various points about the aerodynamics help open the topic up really well. I was thinking about designing a 'pointy' angular crash helmet that would lead the airflow into the air intake and onto the bodywork, but then someone pointed out that drivers' heads move around in the cockpit.

Even so, i still think that if the helmet could be designed with aerodynamics totally in mind, with safety a secondary design requirement, then we'd see some very interesting shapes!!! Alas, safety is the number one target on the list without doubt.

rob

But an angular engine wouldn't it create more turbulence then a normal helmet? even if it would lead the airflow into the airbox, the turbulent air flow wouldn't be good for the pressure inside the airbox and this helmet would have higher drag! and the turbulent air flow would increase skin friction drag.

Here's 3 links to the pictures showing the "plastic"ontop of Mika's helmet.
http://www.formula-one.net/pics01/velke/18-03-2b.jpghttp://www.formula-one.net/pics01/velke/17-03-9b.jpghttp://www.formula-one.net/pics01/velke/17-03-10b.jpg

Ok....that plastic part works the same way as the strange hornes on Kimis helmet....the basic idea is to suck air from inside the helmet...if you look at the pic from the pits, there is a sort of air exit under this plastic part. The idea is to create a pressure gradient due to the diference between the air flowing around the helmet and the air under the plastic part.