Hearkening back to F1’s golden era, the latest collab between Bell Helmets and Roland Sands is being billed as the “ultimate player” — a tribute to the John Player Specials livery that was the gold standard for open wheel racing back in the day!
“The new RSD X Bell Race Star Flex DLX Player is dripping in vintage F1 vibes,” notes Roland Sands. Built for the track just like the JPS Lotus F1 Cars, this limited-edition Race Star is probably the Gucciest one we've released yet,” says Sands.
As fascinating as the latest lid is, the backstory of this collaboration is even cooler! Stoked to finally share this campaign we just released at Bell to support the launch of a new collection of graphics from Roland Sands,” recounts JC Maldonado. “Roland drew inspiration from the renowned John Player Special F1 cars of the 60s and 70s to develop these killer graphics for two of Bell's pinnacle helmets…
“As luck would have it, Larry Chen knew of an original JPS car being stored at Sonoma Raceway. The car was driven by Mario Andretti during the 1976 F1 season and even used in the movie Rush. The owner was stoked to be included in the project (he races the car competitively) and we were able to capture golden hour images of the car and the motorcycle together on track.
It was a surreal experience to hear the Lotus 77 car fire up and I'm still smiling looking back at the images and videos captured that day. Special thanks to Larry Chen and his team for being down to shoot motorcycle content, Bell's talented athlete manager Cam Gish for riding mere feet away from a priceless race car on lukewarm slicks and Roland Sands for trusting me to bring this idea to life.
I wrote some words about the helmet here:
https://www.bellhelmets.com/news/motorcycles/roland-sands-players-race-star-dlx-flex-bullitt-carbon.html
Order It here:
https://rolandsands.com/bell-race-star-flex-dlx-rsd-player-helmet/