There are men who build businesses. There are men who build legends. And then there was Bill Simpson — the dude who set himself on fire to prove a point and achieved both accolades in the process. 

At Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s Gasoline Alley, a rival called Simpson a crook. A liar. Saying Simpson’s products were all salesman-y fluff. Spectators expected blows to be thrown. But Simpson didn’t clench his hands. He instead issued a challenge: Let’s light ourselves on fire, he mentioned. 

Simpson’s MO was to confront the doubt with undeniable proof that his adversary was full of shit. His plan was simple: both men would wear their respective fire suits, douse themselves in fuel, strike a match, and see who lasted longer. Whoever cried uncle first, lost.

Simpson showed up, ready to go. The rival never did. But hundreds gathered nonetheless and Bill still wanted to prove his point. As cameras documented Simpson standing, engulfed in flames, calm and defiant. They were stunned. He’d done it. And it wasn’t bravado. It wasn’t theatrics. Bill had a mission to complete. 

An Upside-Down Beginning

Simpson’s path toward revolutionizing motorsports safety didn’t begin in a boardroom. It began in, well… jail.

At 18 years old, he was booked on reckless endangerment and property damage charges after testing a 44-foot cargo parachute out the back window of a speeding 1955 Chevy wagon in Redondo Beach, California. The car flipped and while Simpson was okay, he found himself behind bars, learning a valuable life lesson: Too much chute just makes things worse.

Simpson Drag Chutes were born in 1959 as a result — a 440-square-foot garage operation with rented sewing machines and rolls of ripstop nylon. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t backed by investors. It was driven by obsession. The way great things are supposed to come about. 

Simpson was a passionate enthusiast. A horsepower junkie and he loved racing. Simpson himself nearly paid the ultimate price in a San Fernando drag racing crash that left him with broken arms and a smashed car. A timber pierced the cockpit and missed him by inches. In that era, racers rented football helmets and wore leather jackets that melted when exposed to fire. Death was common. Protection was for pussies. But that was about to change. 

Simpson didn’t accept that as the cost of competition.

He believed racing could be made safer — and he believed it so deeply he was willing to risk everything to prove it.

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From Chutes to Suits

The leap from parachutes to fire suits wasn’t accidental. It was inevitable.

In the mid-1960s, Simpson introduced one of the first aluminized racing suits. It was bulky, custom-made, lined with flannel and insulation, and cost $140. This was 1965. That was a steep price tag. But racers who had seen friends burn didn’t argue about the cost.

Drag racing legends like Don “The Snake” Prudhomme and Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen became early adopters. McEwen stood in Simpson’s garage as the suits were blasted with blowtorches.

Then came Nomex.

Through conversations with NASA astronaut Pete Conrad — who later became the third man to walk on the moon — Simpson learned about filament Nomex, a fire-resistant synthetic developed by DuPont. Simpson wrapped his own arm in it and demonstrated its power with a blowtorch in meetings with helmet manufacturers and racing officials. 

By 1967, Simpson had taken Nomex to Indianapolis. Just three years removed from the fiery 1964 Indy 500 crash that killed Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald, the paddock was listening.

Soon, nearly the entire Indy starting grid wore Simpson suits.

Simpson didn’t just sell safety. He demonstrated it.

His Golf Game Was Safety

Simpson was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame not because he was a champion driver — though he competed in USAC and finished 13th at the 1974 Indianapolis 500 — but because he redefined what survival meant in racing.

“He could talk about safety forever,” said longtime friend Kenny Koldsbaek. “That was his golf game.”

He attended up to 50 races per year, not for hospitality tents but for wreckage. He studied destroyed cars. Bent cages. Burned fabric. He believed numbers didn’t lie — and if there weren’t numbers, he’d go find them.

After Dale Earnhardt’s death in 2001, Simpson was called to inspect wrecked NASCAR equipment. He examined Joe Nemechek’s battered No. 33 Chevy and famously told the injured driver, “It’s not the hardest you’ve ever hit. It’s the hardest you’ve ever felt.”

His reasoning? The car absorbed less energy than it should have. The human body paid the difference.

Simpson never softened his delivery. He didn’t care about being liked. He cared about being right — because being right meant someone went home alive.

The Evolution That Reached Two Wheels

While Simpson Race Products became synonymous with four-wheeled motorsports, the DNA of that company — obsessive testing, uncompromising materials, racer-first thinking — inevitably found its way into motorcycle helmets.

Motorcycles, after all, offer even less margin for error than cars.

The same man who studied roll cages and shifter boots understood that on two wheels, your head is the cage.

Simpson Motorcycle Helmets carry that lineage. Aggressive, unmistakable silhouettes paired with race-derived safety engineering. From full-face street helmets to DOT and ECE-certified models, the design philosophy is rooted in the same principles Bill championed decades ago: Prove it. Test it. Never compromise.

Where auto racers once trusted Simpson suits to shield them from flame, riders today trust Simpson helmets to manage impact energy and protect what matters most.

It’s not about style alone — though Simpson’s aesthetic has always been bold, rebellious, unmistakably “NFG.” It’s about protection engineered by a company that built its reputation in literal fire.

Loyalty Forged in Heat

Inside Simpson Race Products, loyalty runs deep. Employees celebrate 30- and 40-year anniversaries. Production managers have overseen suit manufacturing for decades. Simpson staffers have been known to fly cross-country to hand-deliver a single suit rather than risk shipping delays.

Tony Stewart, a Simpson athlete since the early 1990s, credits the company’s constant innovation as a reason he stayed. “Bill cared about the racers first,” Stewart said. “He always pushed the limits.”

That racer-first mindset is just as relevant in the V-twin Motorcycle world.

Custom riders push performance boundaries. Unknown Industries, Harley stunt pioneers, have rocked Simpson lids since the beginning. Simpson helmets inspired confidence to carve canyons and blast freeways 12 o’clock style. 

Burning for a Purpose

Bill Simpson died in December 2019 at age 79. By then, the stories had grown — the parachute got larger, the flames taller, the arguments louder. Legends tend to swell over time. But the mission never changed.

Simpson dedicated his life to a mission: He wanted racing to be safer. He believed products should be proven, not promised, and he stood by that ethos. He understood something fundamental that resonates deeply in the motorcycle world: credibility is earned in the fire.

Simpson didn’t win every fight. He didn’t always smooth his edges. But when it came to safety, he never backed down. He stood in the flames so others wouldn’t have to.

And whether in a dragster at 300 mph or on a V-twin carving through desert highways, Bill Simpson’s legacy still burns brightly today. HB