Race Car Lights (Front lights)

[JohnBM01]

GTPlanet, hello again.

When you look at sportscar racing, you'll normally see lights on cars during wet or dark conditions. Usually lights are on for purposes other than those cute little sparkles from the headlights. They've been used for alerting slower cars to move over. they been used in celebrations and all.

This topic talks about those bright lights that light up the track when they need them.

I'll start.

I wonder if light color determines the visibilty and darkness-cutting power. When I seen the Dodge Viper GTS-R of GT3, I noted the fod lights, head lights, and auxillary lights on the car, they were... I want to say amber lights. I don't know if those lights have the power to cut through dark/wet weather better than clear lights. I know about all the halogen bulbs on the street. So when you have a race car with lights at the front, is there actually a preference as to what type of lights to use for the racing situation?

The next question is, do you use more lights for if you have trouble seeing down the road? When do you actually need more lighting? Like, examine the JGTC cars vs. the Le Mans racers in terms of lighting. JGTC has never run a night race (I'd love to see that happen, though), although I'm not sure. Or, with those tiny lights, do they have enough wattage to cut through darkness and rain?

Let's talk about those little sparkly things at night, folks. How about it?

 

[VIPFREAK]

At least in the American Leman Series they were class specific. The GTs thru GT2 (not sure exactly) had to have the amber color lights because of the rules. The prototypes could have the lights that turn night into day.

As for the kind of light, I was told with any light you can only drive as fast as the lights project on the road so you can make it a little better with the type of projection characteristics it has or where it's aimed. Usually, amber is good for fog type of situations where as the HID type of lights is just for more normal driving or racing conditions. I'm probably missing a lot so don't take my word for it on this stuff.

 

[daan]

It used to be that when you went from the UK to France, you had to colour your lights the same amber colour as the Vipers, because that was the colour they used over there.

I just asked me dad why we did that, and he said it was because amber lights don't dazzle as much as clear ones do.

 

[The359]

In endurance racing GTS and GT class cars are required to have yellow lights, Prototypes have white lights, so that when viewed in your rear view mirror, you can tell if you have a faster car coming to pass you or a slower car just behind you.

Most of the time in overnight races, the drivers will leave the lights on following the night racing just out of habit, even though there is no need for them.

The Viper just has extra lights basically for the heck of it. The Corvette C5-Rs sometimes add extra lights into where the front license plate holder is located, and even some LMPs add lights up near the cockpit as a central light.

 

[JohnBM01]

When it comes to lighting a rally team doesn't really rely on lights except for really dark or rainy stages. But if there isn't enough lighting to go around (especially in low-light situations), usually, the light pods are installed to make seeing better.

DTM has some small lights used as well. I can recall looking at Speed Channel with the DTM cars qualifying at night. I want to say the race was Nurburgring, but for GT and touring car series that don't really need serious lighting (like the JGTC or DTM), they somehow have bright enough lights to be used in daylight.

In last year's Sebring 12 hours (as of this date, only three weeks away), Leigh Diffey or... I forgot who the other commentator was, said that the Bentleys need thier lights on because it makes racers be able to see them zoom by. Don't forget, Bentley were 52nd and 53rd or something, so for them to climb through the pack was crucial whether you were in a GT or an LMP900. The beautiful Bentley GTPs were dark green, and considering the environment of Sebring, you don't want to see a dark car zooming at 150mph on that long back straight. If you were a racer in this instance, you'd confuse the dark car for some of the trees in the background. It would be much worse at night, so lights would be needed.

Any more race car light talk?

 

[The359]

Most touring cars have functional lights in case of rain.

 

[Solid Lifters]

I have seen JGTC races where the cars had the lights on. It was pretty colorful to be honest. It seemed the headlight colors matched the overall color of the race cars.

The cyan color race cars had cyan colored lights, the red cars had red tinted lights, and so on, and so on. But, I noticed this was true only for the GT 500 race cars. The 300 class had only white lights, if they were on at all. But most were not on, for some strange reason. It was bright enough not to have the lights on. I figured it was the wishes of the vendor that made the colored lights to have them on during the race for some sort of advertisement.

 

[The359]

In JGTC, all GT300 cars run yellow lights, and all GT500s run red lights. The only exceptions to this is the Honda NSXs in GT500s run Xenon lights (since they are sponsered by Phillips), which would give off a blue tint. The only other car not to run normal colored lights is the Vemac RD350R that has blue light colors.

I've never seen a JGTC car with lights of other colors.

 

[pergatory]

For lighting color:

Blue light causes less attenuation in the pupils of the eye, meaning that a yellow light of equal brightness would seem dimmer when observed directly (looking at the light bulb) because less light is making it into your retina. This is why those HID immitation bulbs hurt your eyes so much, not because they are brighter but because they are blue. However, blue does not illuminate things any better than any other color. Blue also has greater refraction properties through water, meaning that yellow light cuts through fog and rain a lot better than blue light.

In other words: blue bad, yellow good. Except for signaling, where blue tends to get your attention faster, which I think is why they use it on police cruisers. Also, yellow light makes it hard to tell the difference between a white line and a yellow line, which is not so good for street driving.

 

[ExigeEvan]

why doens't anyone use green lights? I thoyght the eyes were more sensitive to green so surely it makes sense for certain tasks. But are they any good in poor weather conditions though?

 

[Scaff]

The yellow/amber lights thing in France has nothing to do with better visability.

It comes from the start of WW2, the French were aware that they would most likely be invaded by Germany and the government wanted the army to be able to spot German vehicles from French ones at night/poor visability.

So an order was given that all French cars had to have yellow/amber tints painted on the lights.

Did it work? Nope, the Germans just painted the lights on their cars as well.

However for a good 40 years after the end of the war this law was still in force in France, it was repealed in the late '80's and now French road cars have white lights, just like the rest of us.

Sometimes fact is far stranger than fiction.

 

[pergatory]

Originally posted by Scaff
The yellow/amber lights thing in France has nothing to do with better visability.

It comes from the start of WW2, the French were aware that they would most likely be invaded by Germany and the government wanted the army to be able to spot German vehicles from French ones at night/poor visability.

So an order was given that all French cars had to have yellow/amber tints painted on the lights.

Did it work? Nope, the Germans just painted the lights on their cars as well.

However for a good 40 years after the end of the war this law was still in force in France, it was repealed in the late '80's and now French road cars have white lights, just like the rest of us.

Sometimes fact is far stranger than fiction.

Interesting story, you'd think they would've seen that one coming. Anyway, the fact remains that yellow light has lower refraction between air and water than any other wavelength, making it ideal for rain/fog conditions. Unfortunately, if you're getting the yellow light by producing white light and putting a yellow lense on it, you're only blocking the blue light, so your overall light output goes down. Still, the benefit can be useful for things like fog lights, meant for cutting through fog. Yellow headlights is probably not such a good idea...

White is good because it contains yellow, but it also contains blue which lights up the fog/rain. Although blue is fine in dry conditions and I think even in snow. In snow you would probably find that yellow gives the texture on the road better definition. That's where yellow fog lights would come in handy. (This is why those fake HID blue bulbs are such a bad idea, because you're just blocking out the yellow light which is the most useful.)

Bear in mind that HID's don't emit a blue light per se, but a very high-temp white light which appears blue to the eye. HID's do have their downside as well though. The light they emit is so white that it's less saturated by whatever it reflects from (before going to your eye), making it somewhat harder to differentiate between white/yellow lines for example, because the yellow lines become light yellow. Honestly I've seen HID's before and I thought it was more soothing than anything. You can still tell which lines are which if you have decent eye sight, and even if not it's usually not an issue.

Ugh, this got long! I'm out!