Tag

AGV Helmet

Browsing

You may have noticed during the Italian GP at Mugello, that Valentino Rossi was once again wearing a special AGV Pista GP R helmet for the event. Created by designer Aldo Drudi, this year’s Mugello’s helmet pays homage to Nicky Hayden and Francesco Totti.

To remember the American motorcycle racer, Rossi’s #46 morphs into the shape and colors of Hayden’s #69, complete with the star that precedes Hayden’s number.

The top of Rossi’s helmet also portrays a soccer pitch, where the nine-time world champion is wearing the blue jersey of the Italian national team, and saying “Mo’ je faccio er cucchiaio” which translates (with a Roman accent) to “I made it spoon” – the spoon referring to a type of penalty kick that sees the ball arching into the goal.

This scene too pays tribute to another athlete – Francesco Totti, who played his last match with the A.S. Roma team last week. On the back of the helmet are “Un capitano…C’è solo un capitano!”, which translates to: “One captain… There’s only one captain!” 

This is another nod to Totti, as the chant is something his fans would yell to him while he was playing.

It’s another home round for The Doctor, so that of course means another special helmet design. For this year’s San Marino GP, Valentino Rossi’s AGV Pista helmet plays to the theme of the coastal race track, with an underwater theme.

Very obviously, Rossi is pictured as a yellow fish that is being chased by a shark (we’ll let you decipher the symbolism there). The words “Via Via Via!” in Italian are on either side of the helmet, translating to “Get Away Get Away Get Away!” in English.

Not one to leave his pets out of the design, on the back of the helmet are Valentino’s dogs Cecilia and Cesare, as well as his cat Rossano, who are sporting some snorkels for their underwater excursion.

It’s the Italian GP…at Mugello, which means two things: 1) hundreds of thousands of rabid Italian motorcycle fans, and 2) another special AGV helmet from The Doctor.

Of course, riders wear special helmets all the time — there’s probably a one-off design at every race — but for some reason Valentino Rossi’s lids, at his home grand prix, are always a special occasion for GP fans.

For the 2015 Italian GP, Valentino Rossi is wearing the very attractive “Yellow Energy” helmet, penned of course by Aldo Drudi. For the VR46 fans in the crowd, we have a smattering of high-resolution photos of the custom AGV Pista GP helmet. Enjoy!

One visor to rule them all, that’s the dream of many motorcyclists that enjoy tinted visors during the day, but want an easy “clear” option for night-time riding.

Until recently, if you wanted to protect your eyes from the sun, most helmet systems required you to have two shields: one clear – for night-time riding, and one tinted – for daytime use.

Not always a convenient or practical solution, we have seen riders resort to wearing sunglasses behind clear visors; or worse, wearing tinted visors at night.

Thankfully, some solutions have emerged from the motorcycle helmet industry, namely transitional visors (as seen from Bell Helmets), which change tint based on the ambient light.

Another technology is electrochromatics, which tints the glass or plastic by applying an electrical current (actually, the electricity makes the cells clear in most use-cases). Helmet startup Skully features this technology on its now vaporware AR-1 helmet design.

Add respected helmet manufacturer AGV to the mix now, as the Italian company debuted its LCD-based AGVisor system in Switzerland last week, though with little fanfare.

The crashes of Valentino Rossi and Andrea Iannone at Aragon two-and-a-half weeks ago raised a lot of questions about safety, leading to the Safety Commission deciding to start removal of all the artificial turf from around the circuits used by MotoGP.

Rossi’s crash, in particular, was severe, the Italian being clipped and knocked briefly unconscious by the back wheel of his Yamaha as he tumbled.

That Rossi did not suffer much worse injuries is in no small part down to his helmet. The AGV Pista GP helmet which Rossi helped develop provided an incredible level of protection for the Italian.

After the incident, AGV took the helmet away to analyze the damage done to the helmet in the crash. They issued a press release, complete with close up photos of the damage sustained, explaining the damage done and how the helmet had protected Rossi.

The press release makes for interesting reading, and the close up photos of the damage are especially revealing of just how well the helmet stood up in the crash. Make sure you click on the photos to view higher resolution versions. The AGV press release appears after the jump.

It’s the Italian Grand Prix this weekend, and that means another special AGV helmet from Valentino Rossi. A wonderful tradition from the nine-time World Champion, Rossi’s helmets can however at times be enigmatic, especially to non-Italians.

Thankfully, the folks at AGV have helped us understand Aldo Drudi’s latest work, which we assume will popularly be called the “Di Vale Helmet” hence forth. We decode the receipe, with photos, after the jump.

UPDATE: The Simoncelli Tribute helmet will be available in the US in the GP-Tech only. They should be in stores any day now, with an MSRP of $749.95.

It has been over a year since we lost Marco Simoncelli, though it is clear from MotoGP’s revisiting of the Malaysian GP this year that his memory is alive and well. Helping commemorate Marco’s spirit, AGV Helmets is releasing more accurate re-styled Marco Simoncelli replica helmets that have been authorized by the Simoncelli family.

Incorporating the San Carlo logo on the chin guard, the Dainese logo on the top of the shell, a heart with the colors of the Japanese flag on the back, and Marco’s 58 racing number on the temple, the helmet is basically identical to the one that SuperSic wore during the 2011 MotoGP Championship season.

Today at the MotoGP test in Jerez, AGV debuted its next-generation helmet: the AGV PistaGP. The fruits of the Italian company’s Project 46, the PistaGP is the first helmet to come from AGV’s new AGV Standards program, which seeks create products with an inside-out approach. You have likely already seen Valentino Rossi testing the AGV PistaGP in the recent Sepang tests, and I have already waxed poetic about how excited I am about this product.

Generally I am not a big fan of AGV sport bike helmets (though I do have a torrid love affair with the AGV AX-8 Dual Sport helmet), as I find the field-of-view (FOV) on AGV lids to be far too limited for my riding tastes, but the PistaGP promises a host of improvements to AGV’s helmet design, especially an improved FOV, which should allay my complaints. For AGV, the company hopes the PistaGP, and its progeny from the AGV Standards program, will reposition the helmet manufacturer once again as again the pinnacle maker of motorcycle helmets.

Releasing details on the PistaGP to the assembled GP paddock press at Jerez, we can finally publicly talk about this new lid and AGV’s new approach to designing motorcycle helmets. Details after the jump, along with more photos than you can shake a stick at.

You may have already noticed that Valentino Rossi has been sporting a new lid in his off-season tests with the factory Ducati Desmosedici GP12. Said to have a greater field of vision, the prototype helmet has being going by the code name “Project 46” as the helmet has literally been built around Rossi himself. I say literally because AGV’s new helmet is based off what the Italian company is calling AGV Standards, a new philosophy on how the Italian company makes its forthcoming helmets.

In addition to testing the factory Ducati Desmosedici GP12 “Phoenix” this week at Sepang, Valentino Rossi is also trying out a new lid from AGV. Aside from the carbon fiber goodness, and of course the Rossi stickers (which add 5hp & $200), AGV’s prototype helmet sports a noticably pronounced rear spoiler. Tucked in behind the windscreen, it is obvious why the Italian helmet manufacturer designed such a large protrusion off the back of the prototype helmet, as it looks to be clearly helping the flow off the back of the helmet, across the rider’s hump, and down his backside.

Yes, that’s all well and good, but what has this writer really salivating is that reports from Malaysia say the windscreen’s field of view is HUGE. I think the exact words described to me were, “it’s like watching a flat screen TV with your nose against the monitor.” While I love my AGV AX-8 Dual Sport (I rocked it hard at the BRD RedShift SM prototype test), I just can’t get that same enthusiasm behind AGV’s road race line. Having ridden with both the AGV T2 and AGV GP-Tech, my biggest complaint is that the field of view on both these helmets feels restricted (a common complaint apparently from riders used to Arai’s helmet design).