FLY Racing Blueprint Protection Line with RHEON™
Role: Design Lead
Client: FLY Racing, RHEON LABS
Completed: July 2026
Purchase
The Foundation for Every Rider's Journey in Protection.
CGI by Alfie Thompson for RHEON LABS
FLY Racing's relationship with Rheon Labs goes back to 2019, when the original Formula helmet became the first product to carry RHEON™ technology onto a start line, and by extension into the heads (sorry) of riders from local amateur tracks to the front row at Anaheim. Seven years and a hard-earned reputation for saving people’s brains later, FLY came back with a brief that went beyond adding RHEON™ technology to another product; they wanted to build an entire protection range around it from the ground up.
Blueprint is the result: a six-piece system spanning chest, shoulder, elbow and knee protection across both moto and MTB, engineered around the idea that a rider's trust in their gear should be earned once, at the platform level, rather than re-proven with every new product.
// The Brief
From customer research with FLY Racing’s sales team and customer base, we found that those familiar with the Formula helmet system already deeply trusted
RHEON™ technology before Blueprint existed. Therefore, this product range had to honour and build upon
seven years of credibility founded by an award winning helmet. What FLY wanted was a shift in philosophy: full-body protection that met the incoming race regulations without asking riders to trade comfort or style for compliance, built as one coherent platform.
RHEON™ was to be structural to that philosophy, not a marketing ingredient bolted on afterwards. I led the RHEON side of RCH-1 through RCH-3 and the knee protection range (RCH-0's chest piece was built by a developer on my team, who deserves the credit for it rather than me), which meant owning the geometry work, the system-level tuning with FLY's shell designs, and part of the CGI for the launch material.
// Behind The Design
The protection in the moto and MTB space has always been the same: stack low density foam behind a hard shell until is passes certification, and accept the trade-off between protection and comfort. RHEON proves that trade-off is a false one, and Blueprint was the chance to prove it across an entire range rather than a single hero product. For RCH-1 through RCH-3, that meant designing and testing twenty-four distinct RHEON geometries, varying cell diameter, wall profile, wall thickness and whether a backing mesh was present at all (and if so, how thick), chasing the lowest weight and thinnest profile that would still clear certification with an appropriate factor of safety.
The more interesting part happened after the initial geometry was developed. The initial optimisation was tested behind FLY's existing Revel Lite shell, which was the only real substrate available at the time and a sensible starting baseline. But once Blueprint's own shell geometry and material were locked in, the system changed underneath: a slightly softer shell with a different load distribution meant the backing geometry itself could be softened too, and the two components together outperformed what either could manage alone. Designing the insert and shell in harmony rather than treating the RHEON piece as a drop-in component allowed for system-level optimisation that delivered low-profile, highly flexible protection. The knee range took the opposite route deliberately. RE, RDH and RK-5 are three very different constructions, a compression-fit soft good, a hard shell with an aramid abrasion layer, and a hinged brace-style guard behind a plastic shell, but rather than invent three new RHEON solutions they were build around our existing curved armour platform. It was already the most optimised part in the RHEON Armour Range.
Production RCH-3 Tech Pack Shoulder Geometry Optimisation Swatches
Back Geometry Optimisation Swatches
// Real Rider Testing
FLY's product development team in Boise are riders first and developers second, which shows in how they test: every sample gets ridden the day it arrives, and their sponsored athletes feed back on each iteration, so the range is shaped by the people who have to trust it at speed rather than by a lab sign-off alone. I was lucky enough to be at Anaheim 1 Supercross at the start of 2026 while FLY was shooting launch photography with their riders wearing early Blueprint samples, and RJ Hampshire liked the RCH-0 enough that he simply did not give the samples back after the shoot.
Anaheim Supercross 2026RJ Hampshire delivers runner-up