Lando Norris Joins the Race Against Dementia, Fans Show Support with a Twibbon

Lando Norris in Dutch Prix 2024 – Steffen Prößdorf

On May 21, 2026, reigning Formula 1 World Champion Lando Norris walked into a room full of press in Montreal to show a newly-designed helmet. The design is split in half, one half shows the intricate network of synapses of a healthy human brain, while the other shows a fading side, representing a brain that has lost its synaptic network. The helmet design was developed with Dr. Maura Malpetti to visualize what dementia looks like. 

Lando launched this helmet to wear at the Canadian Grand Prix 2026. Within hours, before Norris even took off at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Montreal, his fans had already built something of their own. They created a Twibbonize campaign called "LN1 Race Against Dementia”.

Why the helmet mattered

Sir Jackie Stewart, three-time F1 world champion, founded Race Against Dementia in 2016 after his wife Helen McGregor was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. The charity has committed more than 20 million pounds to research across five continents. The charity pairs the mindset of motorsport engineering to accelerate research on dementia.

In 2025, Stewart unveiled a tartan helmet signed by all 20 living F1 world champions, including Michael Schumacher, to raise funds for the charity. After winning the 2025 championship, Norris added his signature. That signature became a relationship. The relationship became the Montreal helmet.

For the helmet, Norris and Malpetti wanted to make the invisible visible, to show the physical devastation of synaptic loss in a form that millions of race fans would recognize. They took the ‘blobs’ design that Norris has been known for, but now those blobs have a serious, thoughtful color to it, representing the direness of the cause.

Exposure to the cause 

The fans were ready. From a quick search of “Lando” on Twibbonize, it seems that it has become their tradition to put on the blobs in their social media profiles to show up for their favored athlete in every race.

But there are thoughtful details being considered here. The blobs are now sporting the “Race Against Dementia” tagline. It is a beautiful design that follows the split that appears on Norris’ helmet. One represents the healthy brain, and the other, dimmer side is a brain with synaptic loss.

By joining the charity, Norris has succeeded in getting more publicity and exposure toward dementia. There are more than 55 million cases of dementia in the world right now, and the numbers are predicted to grow to 139 million by 2050. Dementia is a brain disorder that affects not only those living with it, but also their loved ones.

What to learn from this campaign

Your support for celebrities you love can be meaningful. Launching and wearing the new helmet might be just another day for a Formula 1 racer like Lando Norris. But this time he made it meaningful by joining Sir Jackie Stewart’s charity. 

When you go on to create a new twibbon out of this celebrity action, you are making the cause that they support your identity as well. It is a way of saying, “It’s not just their cause, it’s ours”. An important cause has now spread alongside the act of sharing the Twibbonize campaign.