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AGV PistaGP

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While we are excited and anxiously awaiting the AGV PistaGP helmet, one American helmet manufacturer is less-than-thrilled with the Italian company’s latest offering: Del Rosario. A small boutique firm based out of New York, Del Rosario’s aim was to bring to market helmet designs that were “caught up to the rest of the industry.” Showing off a number of CAD renders since its inception, Del Rosario has clearly missed its late-2011 shipping date, and as far as we can tell, has not actually produced any physical prototypes or finished models.

Getting a fair bit of press and then falling off the radar, Del Rosario is back in the limelight as the company sent a worded warning to AGV through its corporate Facebook page. According to a message posted by Del Rosario on its social media portal, one of the company’s former advisors showed AGV Del Rosario’s stylebook, and now three years later the PistaGP has emerged with a shell design that has some obviously similar characteristics to Del Rosario’s renders.

Today at the MotoGP test in Jerez, AGV debuted its next-generation helmet: the AGV PistaGP. The fruits of the Italian company’s Project 46, the PistaGP is the first helmet to come from AGV’s new AGV Standards program, which seeks create products with an inside-out approach. You have likely already seen Valentino Rossi testing the AGV PistaGP in the recent Sepang tests, and I have already waxed poetic about how excited I am about this product.

Generally I am not a big fan of AGV sport bike helmets (though I do have a torrid love affair with the AGV AX-8 Dual Sport helmet), as I find the field-of-view (FOV) on AGV lids to be far too limited for my riding tastes, but the PistaGP promises a host of improvements to AGV’s helmet design, especially an improved FOV, which should allay my complaints. For AGV, the company hopes the PistaGP, and its progeny from the AGV Standards program, will reposition the helmet manufacturer once again as again the pinnacle maker of motorcycle helmets.

Releasing details on the PistaGP to the assembled GP paddock press at Jerez, we can finally publicly talk about this new lid and AGV’s new approach to designing motorcycle helmets. Details after the jump, along with more photos than you can shake a stick at.