Ayrton Senna Signed Visor, McLaren-Honda Livery Helmet

Ayrton Senna joined McLaren in 1988 and, with Honda power behind him, won the world championship that year and again in 1990 and 1991. Through all of it his helmet barely changed. Sid Mosca and his son Alan painted the design in five days in 1979, when Senna was called up to represent Brazil at the World Karting Championship in Estoril: a yellow base, the colour of Brazilian sport and visible from a distance, with a green stripe over a blue one running back from the eyeline to suggest focus, edged in thin white lines. Senna told them the design was his alone, and he kept it for the rest of his career. In the McLaren-Honda years it carried Marlboro, Honda and Nacional, the Brazilian bank that was among his most faithful sponsors, while the shells beneath it changed from Bell to Rheos and then to Shoei.

The signature is the point of this piece. The visor is an original, signed by Ayrton Senna in silver pen, and it is fitted to a high-quality replica helmet painted in his McLaren-Honda colours: the yellow shell with its green and blue stripes, Marlboro across the brow, Honda along the top of the visor, Nacional on the chin bar and sides, and the BOSS logos of the period. Presented this way, the signature sits at eye level, full size and in context, rather than flat in a frame. A unique piece, supplied with a fitted helmet bag.