What does that mean?
Wearing a Vircos suit from the Bespoke Racing Gear line doesn’t just mean wearing the motorcycle suit you really want – it means wrapping yourself in a fully-fledged safety device.
You can rest assured though, that before it ever reaches you our MotoGP and Superbike riders have already tested it; in addition to it being fully certified in a series of demanding lab tests that mimic real world crashes.

Standards
Standards are made to be beaten. Motorsport is always a challenge, for each rider personally before you even think about your opponents.
In Vircos we approached the CE certification standards with the same attitude, challenging ourselves to reach the highest possible standard. But, before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s break it down in order…

What does it mean for a suit to be certified?
To answer this question first we have to step back to definitions and classifications. Leather suits are certified as PPE – Personal Protective Equipment.
This makes it fall under a similar category to your helmet, or even a work uniform – if you have one. As such it is an object designed and engineered to protect the wearer from risk. In the same way a fireman’s uniform protects from the risk of fire a motorcycle suit protects from the risk that arises from riding a motorbike.

Since December 21st 1989 – in regard to the regulation 89/686/CEE – every leather suit or more general motorcycle garment was supposed to be CE certified; but, in reality, most of the motorcycle clothing industry ignored this obligation.

It was common for companies to put out garments that contained CE certified protectors but with the garment itself not certified and tested.

This happened because the old CE regulation (the EN 13595) was too restrictive – in the sense that it was mainly written for functional work garments, such as police leather trousers and jackets – and not ever really optimised or orientated to the leather suits produced for racing.
To make something that was practical, comfortable and useable for a racer, within the standard was almost not possible.
So, the standard EN 13595 existed – but was largely ignored.

Despite this, at Vircos we did a have a model of race suit (The Vircos AIR-GAP) that was certified to this standard. We made it as a challenge to ourselves, that we wanted to explore to show the level of our products, even against such a difficult standard.

With the introduction of the new regulation EN 17092 however, the motorcycle industry as a whole needed to change its view.
With a new harmonised standard, which works across multiple disciplines, all garments are supposed to be certified.
It’s a very different story when every single aspect of the garment is considered (and then tested) against its aim to protect the user. Every seam, every material, every mould – all aspects of the construction of the suit – are tested again and again in a lab, to ensure they meet the standards.

Back to the way we approach the CE certification…

The regulation divides motorcycle garments into different classes:

• Class AAA Garments: Highest level of protection from impact and abrasion.
• Class AA Garments: Protection from impact and abrasion.
• Class A Garments: Minimum necessary degree of protection from impact and abrasion.
• Class B Garments: Designed to provide equivalent abrasion protection of Class A but without impact protectors.
• Class C Garments: Impact protectors ensemble garment.

As we only make leather suits for racing of course we had our eye on the highest standard of EN 17092 – but this wasn’t enough; we wanted to beat these standards, performing way beyond the base requirements.
For example:
The traction resistance for the seams in one of our suits is up to 145% tighter than the required norm of the highest standard of EN 17092 AAA.
Only Scholler Kevlar is used on our suits, because the tear resistance of that specific material is up to 5 times higher than the required standard of EN17092 AAA.

How can I check if my garment is CE Certified?
In every CE Certified garment you will find a label stating that it is CE certified. In addition to the label there will be a booklet which explains the class and level of certification. Also in this booklet is the information of a special website where you can request the DoC – the Declaration of Conformity – of the product.

No DoC means it’s not certified!
If you’ve been reading this article for a while, congratulations! We know this sort of thing isn’t as sexy as a picture of a MotoGP rider mid-corner, but it’s a hugely important part of our job, so we thank you for reading it and getting properly informed.

If you have any questions regarding certification our CUSTOMER CARE department is available to answer any questions you have. Don’t hesitate to get in touch and ask if you want to.