It may not be a name us lot are familiar with, but if you are in the racing business, Jens Munser will certainly be a name you will know.
Munser is a helmet designer with the JMD designs company in Germany. JMD have an impressive list of clients on their CV, designing helmets for the Mercedes GP drivers Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg, Rubens Barrichello, Felipe Massa, Nick Heidfeld and Giancarlo Fisichella, and of course Red Bull! Scott Speed had his Toro Rosso helmet designed by JMD when he was at the team, and many other Red Bull-backed racing drivers have had their helmets designed by this company, including Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber.
Jens Munser from JMD helps Seb design most of his helmets – hence why on the bottom-front of Seb’s helmets, it says JMD. I have found some images of Seb’s 2009 China helmet being painted by Jens Munser, from start to finish, and have done my best to describe what is happening in all the images:
Jens Munser paints the base coat onto Vettel’s carbon fibre Arai helmet, including the thin gold detailing on the helmet. Believe it or not, only very small detailing on the helmet is sprayed gold to save weight!
The gold lines on Vettel’s helmet is then covered in thin tape to stop them being sprayed over.
More of the helmet is covered by the designer to avoid areas on the design coming into contact with the wrong paint layer. Once again, minimal paint is added to make sure that the helmet weighs as little as possible.
Munser then readies the silver paint to go on the helmet, to fit the traditional blue & silver Red Bull helmet colours.
The silver paint is then sprayed on to the helmet.
The helmet is then dried in a 50 degree oven for 30 minutes.
Using a computer template, Munser then draws the design on to the helmet with a pencil, which is sat on a special mount so the helmet doesn’t slip.
The silver areas are now covered in masking tape as the helmet is now ready for the classic Red Bull blue colour. The masking tape has to be done perfectly as if it goes over the silver areas, it would mean having to respray the helmet silver and therefore adding weight.
The classic Red Bull blue is then added to the helmet. He can safely spray over the masking tape, as this will be removed later. The helmet is once again placed in the oven after the blue is sprayed on.
The tape is removed and the Red Bull branding is then tackled.
The floral pattern on the top and chin of Vettel’s helmet is designed on the computer.
The pattern is now transferred on to the top of the helmet which is made white. A matt finish is then applied.
After over 16 hours the helmet is complete!
Seb finishes the job off, wearing the helmet to Red Bull Racing’s first ever win at the 2009 Chinese Grand Prix.
Wow! Excellent post, really informative
And I must say, that helmet is really one of my faves.
Great Post worth the tease and wait, all that work for one helmet they must be flat out at this time of the year…
Wow! this was really fascinating! Thank you for posting! I’ve seen many shows like American Chopper, American hotrod etc where they paint cars & I’ve seen how they paint F1 cars but not the little work that goes into helmets. Very good 5/5. *clap clap*
I shouldn’t keep saying this but just for ingenunity, being highly informative and downright fascinating this is my post of the year so far.
I love helmet designs and the article was so well written it really felt like I was there watching the entire process. I had no clue so much effort went into it. I wish I could design and make helmets!
A big thank you to JMD and Munser for some exquisite work over the years.
Top post
really love the pics – often wondered how that was done.
Thanks
Awesome post,
Vettel’s helmets are the best. So cool
Really interesting! That must have taken you ages to research, fantastic post!
Thank you! Nice blog by the way. I have added it to the blogroll.
Thank you very much! I will definitely add yours to my blogroll when I get round to sorting it out – which hopefully should be soon!
Very cool, the skill in creating such a work of art is amazing… must show my husband who’s spent weeks painting the tank of his BSA, he’d love to have a result a tenth that good.
What a fascinating story and just a brilliant timeline of photos to accompany it. Such a wonderful article. Thanks for publishing this!
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great job, but are the red bull logos stickers? if they are painted, not stickers, the final result is spectacular
i really like this, very good detail as i know jens personaly
Great article ! I’m a F1 helmet fan and I post pictures of all the new helmets on Twitter @PFF1.
Can you tell more about the final detailling. I presume the Red Bull logo’s are stickers, but what about the flowery lines on top of the helmet?
And finally, I’m surprised to see the White Flowers helmet at the end of the article. The production pictures are of the Black Flowers helmet, are the not ? The one he won the GP of England with.