By Maggie Barry

THEY are the vital safety items that help keep motor racing drivers safe in high-speed crashes.

But an enterprising Scot is making a successful business by making hand-finished bespoke crash helmets for racing drivers.

Such is his success that Joe Tanner counted at least ten of his helmets on the grid as the drivers lined up for the legendary 24 hour Le Mans race.

He said: “And there may have been more I couldn’t see."

He is based in a tiny studio at Knockhill Circuit in Fife where he creates one-off personalised headgear for some of the world’s top professional drivers.

Helmets are the one thing the pros have some influence over and indeed, retired racers often have cabinets full of tin lids past and present.

Otherwise it is the sponsors or the team who call the shots, stating where the decals should go, how the car and the overalls should be decorated – but when it comes to the helmets….

He added: "They will wax them and polish them and as they progress they will upgrade their helmets with their achievements.”

“I’m doing one for David Brabham at the moment which will celebrate his career and he wants something on it representing ten different highlights. I’ll have to think about how I’m going to do that.

“I did one for Paul Hollywood from The Great British Bake Off which had a Union Jack theme and one for David Beckham when he was a Jaguar Land Rover ambassador to match his car.”

Formula One apart each driver likes to stamp his own personal design on his helmet and, according to Joe, just like the fashionistas, they regularly check out each other’s headwear.

Joe came to helmet painting because of a passion for art and racing.

Originally from Aberdeenshire, he went to Alford Academy, the year above Emeli Sande whose father was his craft and design teacher.

After a stint at college he went to Knockhill as an instructor waiting for his day in the sun as a top racing driver.

But fate did not bless him with the hundreds of thousands of pounds needed to follow that path so instead his wife bought him a course in helmet painting for his birthday.

He said: "The first helmet I painted was for Rory Butcher whom I was actually racing against in Formula Ford at the time."

"Then I did one for Gordon Shedden. He is quite precise in what he wants and I think the second one I ever painted for him was the one he was wearing when he won the Touring Cars that year.

“Jonny Adam was wearing one of mine when he won the GTE at Le Mans. It all just seemed to come together and the orders started coming in thick and fast.”

By this time he was working in the events team at Knockhill during the day and painting helmets at night to keep up, until the lack of sleep forced him into striking out on his own.

That was ten years ago and he has not regretted it for a second. For a time he even dabbled with dryers for sweaty helmets and successfully sold one to Mrs Hamilton for Lewis’s Christmas.

It is an incredibly skilled job. First of all Joe has to come up with the design with or without the driver’s input and have it approved.

“I have had to persuade people that a werewolf helmet is not a good idea – it’s not racing is it?” he said.

Then he draws it on vinyl and weeds out what is needed – a bit like a stencil – applies that to the helmet and airbrushes on layers of paint.

The order in which the paint is applied is crucial, blue will go on top of yellow, for example, but yellow will not go on top of blue. Sometimes the longest part of the design is working out how to execute it.

And of course, there is the safety aspect. A helmet is there to help save a driver’s life and nothing, including chemicals, must interfere with that.

Joe is one of only eight helmet painters in the country. He blinks a little when he realises just how he fell into it and how the business has boomed.

He painted a helmet for a footballer once – white with the Italian colours on it and his games and victories down the back. Three days after it left his studio he received a picture of it being presented on the pitch in Rome to club legend Francesco Totti.

“I don’t follow football. I had no idea,” laughed Joe.

He has never painted a helmet for Jackie Stewart but has done replicas.

He said: “ I sigh. People think that it’s just a band of tartan around it but that’s all done by hand and I’ve done hundreds.”