LED Race Track Lighting
Good race track lights help improve the safety of racers and spectators, by delivering bright and uniform illumination to the tracks. Nowadays, LED is frequently installed and starts to replace the traditional lighting such as HPS, metal halide, mercury vapor and halogen flood lamps because of LED’s higher energy efficiency and durability. Our motor speedway lighting system can be applied to both recreational or international tournament such as NASCAR and Formula 1 World Championship. Let’s explore how to light up the race track and arena with LED.
Race Track Lighting Design
1. Brightness (Lux) Lighting Requirement for Racing Track
Unlike ordinary driving, high-speed racing requires complete concentration, and the racers need to response any emergencies on the track. In general, 700 to 1000 lux level would be the minimum requirement for the race track flood lights, depending on the special requirement imposed by the racing association like NYRA, the horizontal and vertical lux level can be up to 1500 to 2000 lux.
There are two types of lux levels, namely horizontal and vertical. The former one means the brightness on the ground and (horizontal surface), while the latter one is the illumination on the side of the sports cars. The optimal ratio is approx. 1:1, which gives the best lighting quality inside the racing arena.
We may be confused when it comes to luminary selection. Let’s take a look at the following example.
How Many Power Do We Need to Light Up a Racing Track?
We need to acquire the length, area and the height of the high mast pole of the motor speedway. For a 1000 square meter field that needs 800 lux, the lumen requirement = 1000 x 800 lux = 800000 lumens, and thus we can know that at least 6000W LED lights are needed theoretically. Since it is a preliminary calculation only, please feel free to approach our sales representatives for more information.
Who Are We?
LedsMaster is an experienced LED sports lighting manufacturer delivering quality yet inexpensive lighting. Before buying the LED lights, you are always welcome to request the free lighting design for the racing track lighting projects.
2. Lighting Uniformity
Apart from brightness level, the lights inside motor speedway should be “uniform” enough. Uniform lighting indicates that the lux is evenly distributed on the track. This parameter reflects whether there is a peak brightness in a certain area. If the lux levels in all sampling spots are the same, the lighting uniformity will be equal to 1 (maximum).
Generally speaking, the lighting uniformity of 0.5 to 0.6 would be satisfactory. To further improve the user experience, we deliver LED motorsports lighting solution with 0.7 to 0.8 uniformity, which gives you the unmatched lighting experience.
Special Tips for Beginners: How to know the lighting solution is bright and uniform enough? In the lighting industry, we will gather the above information in the photometric report. DIALux and RELUX are the common software that lighting designer and engineers use. We can request the lighting companies to do the report to see the lighting performance. Surely, we deliver free lighting design reports for you. Please feel free to contact us to get the professional lighting opinion.
3. Color Rendering Index (CRI)
CRI indicates that how real the color we can experience under the lighting. The maximum value of CRI is 100, which is equivalent to sunlight. It is an essential parameter when choosing the best lighting because the colors of the grand tourer will be distorted under the low CRI illumination (<60).
Depending on your needs and lighting requirement, we deliver sports lighting with high CRI up to 80 or 90, and thus we can see the “real” colors.
4. Flicker Free Lighting for Auto Racing
Spectators and reports may want to capture the exciting moments and photograph the luxury sports cars. Nowadays, almost everyone has the smart phone that can shoot 4K or slow motion (i.e. 240 fps, 960 fps) videos. Our premium lighting is designed for high speed photography up to 6000 Hz (with flickering rate <0.3%).
Why Using LED Race Track Lights?
1. More Durable
Night racing is very common. If the lights easily go off during the tournament, it will cost severe safety issue and economical loss. Since our LED lights has 80,000 hours life span at L70, it lasts for around 22 years for 10 hours daily operation. By replacing the metal halide, mercury vapor, HPS, fluorescent and other conventional lighting to LED lights, we can save much maintenance cost.
This feature is especially essential for the speedway holding 24 Hours of Le Mans, or other night races.
Besides longer life span, our LED lights are waterproof as well, and thus it tolerates the adverse weather condition.
2. Minimize Light Pollution
Poor lighting technique delivers scattered light beam, which leaks to surrounding areas. It leads to two problems. First, the central brightness will be decreased, and thus affect the lighting quality. We will need extra lights to compensate the loss subsequently. Then, it causes light pollution which affects the surrounding residential areas and the wildlife.
Our LED lighting system is customized for different motion speedways – we will combine the use of lighting having different powers, beam angles, and lens covers to minimize the light pollution. The illumination will be more concentrated to the designated area.
3. Running Cost of Race Track Lighting
What is the cost of race track lighting and its running cost? It really depends on the scale of the speedway. For a medium-sized racetrack, the lamp cost would be around $25,000 to $60,000. To get a more accurate value, please feel free to consult our sales representatives.
As for the running cost, for each 10,000W LED lights, the cost of running the race track lighting = 10,000W x 8 hours x $0.12/1000 = $9.6 daily, or $288 monthly. If your existing lighting system is using halogen flood lights, the operating cost would be 10 times of LEDs, as the brightness of 10,000W LED is equivalent to 100,000W halogen lamp.
4. Anti-glare Lighting
Our lighting solution utilizes the innovative system. It specifically includes pinpoint light control for racing, having exceptional uniformity, as well as reduction of glare. It supports 4K, Full HD filming at night. Using LED racetrack lighting anti-glare technology on the perimeter of the area minimizes the environmental impact such as lighting pollution. We deliver the ideal systems and customized solution for drivers, spectators, and photographers.
If you would like to get the quote and lighting design, please feel free to email us at beatus@ledsmaster.com