schwarmerei1

Since Oscar has announced a special helmet for this weekend and will also have a special helmet at Silverstone (as likely will Lando), I figured this was a good time to drop an update to the special helmet analysis.

This update includes a couple of corrections to Version 1.0 (I missed out a couple of Lando's helmets from 2025 that improved his statistics a little) as well as updates from the most recent races.

So as to be able to provide a direct comparison between Lando and Oscar, I have only analyzed data from 2023 forward.

Here are the full aggregate totals:

What is immediately apparent from this is that, for Lando, the special helmet curse appears to be real. He finishes races 33.6% of the time LESS in a special helmet than in his regular one. The effect for Oscar, however, is pretty insignificant. He still finishes races less often in a special helmet, but only 1.8% of the time less. Likewise, while Oscar finishes an average of 0.9 places lower in a special helmet versus his regular helmet, Lando finishes an average of 2.4 places lower.

However, looking at this year's numbers so far, it would seem that the perception of a special helmet curse for Oscar may be the result of recency bias.

It's clear that both drivers have been doing significantly worse in special helmets compared to their regular helmets this season, but taken comparatively, Lando is still doing MUCH worse. He has yet to finish a race wearing a special helmet this season, while Oscar has finished 2/3 of the races he's worn a special helmet in, meaning he only has finished 12.5% less often in a special helmet compared to his regular one.