F1 Night races

[DaveKillens]

All good points SZ, and welcome to the forum. It's always better to be informed by those closer to the action, we get a more realistic assessment of the true situation and it's possible future.
This entire proposition by Bernie may be a ploy to force the Aussie GP out of business to hand the calendar event over to some other venue that can stuff more cash into Bernie's pockets.
But like Ray, I've watched (and even attended) night races. Every track that has converted to night races has been an unqualified success. It works easily in NASCAR, and I believe it can be made to work in road racing. But there are two necessary ingredients. A valid lighting system has to be installed, and it has to be run Saturday night.

[chepoi]

I am Malaysian. My house is only 22 km from the circuit. There is lots of hazards which is value more than the money that Bernie will collect.

1. Lots of multiple species of poisonous snakes i.e. phyton, king cobra @ reptiles i.e scorpions, around the circuit especially the hill stands. In Sepang F1 circuit history itself there is a story where the king cobra has been lost & killed in the circuit during F1 @ motoGP practice. A snake has been kill by Marco Melandri knees @ 200 km/h near turn 10 if i am not mistaken during the practice! Reptiles is more aggresives during night time because of the cooler in temperature soothing them. Me myself found cobra in 2004 F1 race but not @ the grand stand but @ hill stand. It was behind the toilet looking for the wetter and cooler place to hide. i'm afraid that the sounds will make them more aggresive. Even in daytime the came our from their hidings to find what is going on around the circuit... then just imagine what happens if it was in night time, the time that they aggresive to find food for them!!!!

2. There is no more HOTTEST RACE IN THE WORLD. It'll be THE MILDEST, WILDEST ANIMAL SPECTATORS RACE IN THE WORLD!

3. Sepang F1 circuit is just next to KL International Airport. The excessive lighting from the circuit will distracted, interrupting the pilot vision during airplane landing. Bernie might want the money from the TV and.... others life as well!!!!


4. Lots of under age boys & girls coming to the circuit has been sponsored by the corporates in order to encourage them to enter the motorsports industry one day. If Bernie wants the money from Europe then he no need the money from the Malaysians.


Now people of Malaysia scared to turn up to the circuit if the race is night race. Yes we have endurance race which is run @ night but the only place that circuit administrator open is only Grand stand not the hill stand. If hillstand open, i don't think it is safe!!!!


SAFETY FIRST!

[DaveKillens]

3. Sepang F1 circuit is just next to KL International Airport. The excessive lighting from the circuit will distracted, interrupting the pilot vision during airplane landing. Bernie might want the money from the TV and.... others life as well!!!!

I wish some would research the kinds of lighting employed in NASCAR night races. http://www.musco.com/projshow/project.p ... otorsports.
This is a lot of lighting, but not "excessive" but controlled. There is an airport adjacent to the Daytona track, and the lighting spillover from the track has not cost any lives or aircraft crashes.

[SZ]

dave i don't doubt for a second that it can be done and done well.

i completely doubt that F1 would adopt US technical guidelines for how it's done. it's just too potentially litigious. i agree with earlier posts in this thread (ray i think) that there's very likely little difference between the fundamental requirements for safe lighting of an F1 race vs a motocross, nascar, whatever race. so you'll more likely see a raft of FIA meetings, committees, technical reviews, paid research, trials, then draft guidelines and finally a trial before the real deal. i don't think your and ray's points are wrong at all - it is very much technically possible. the processes by which it must be adopted in F1 at any track are simply likely to be far more drawn out for reasons outside 'is it possible'.

saturday races are a good idea in every sense locally, but we're GMT+10 here, so very likely that'd be viewed negatively as the race would fall at saturday midday in target markets when ideally it's a 10PM or so start that BE is after (that time of year the sun can go down around 8.30PM, that's still lunch time, so we're talking going racing quite late - finishing around midnight - and the festivities starting thereafter). let alone that the traditional viewing dollar for F1 is on sunday.

(nice link BTW).

onto my home round though, consider this. albert park is:

-in fully functioning, racetrack condition for a week or so of the year at most (4 days if you follow the PR). so not a lot of time to 'rig up some lights and see if our simulations work out vs these new night race regs, then we'll make a few changes so she's all sweet for the 360km/h racecars come sunday'

-a park with a racetrack on it during this - we don't quite have australia's more interesting fauna living near by but there are populations of various species (other than humans not interested in F1!) that you might imagine don't take to well to the GP in general... let alone having it at 120dB + all lit up at night when they feed/sleep/get busy!!

-a park without on it the rest of the time with a very much growing and thriving ecology, so accurately predicting lighting requirements is trickier still

this isn't an invitation to have me eat my words - it's certainly still possible! just contrast the above with the situation at singapore and malaysia, and it's far less likely. have a good read of where BE wants to take the calender and contrast that against what every team manager says regards a workable number of races in a year, and draw your own conclusions...

even if it becomes a night race (which it doesn't have to pre-2010, but you can imagine how well a day 2008 race would fare with BE against an inaugural night singapore GP?) - how long do you think our public would sustain it or BE would support it in favor of newer, more profit-amenable spectacles?

if the forum wants to speculate on something more likely to happen, consider this on regional pride issues... what's a more likely location for the first night GP to be held next year, singapore or sepang?

dave i think a night GP at indy or vegas would be spectacular, but my money says 'malaysia boleh!'

[furnik]

kep it on permament tracks not street tracks please. the streets are run for there looks not for the lights. also bernie think of the residents not the time slot and money mate.

[checkered]

Dave, thanks for the

link. Artificial lighting adds a whole different aesthetic to a venue and if done correctly, can add to the experience on many different levels. If someone were to ask me about it (a shaky proposition to say the least), my first advice would be that it is propably wasteful and illogical to start by lighting existing tracks. They're designed for daylight racing and propably even optimized for certain hours of operation specifically. It isn't like Tilke and his team just take a map and haphazardly draw a wiggly line on it and say "done". Hopefully .

That many of these circuits are fairly or brand spanking new, means that it isn't a very sustainable proposition to alter perfectly valid structures "just because" since new ones are constantly being planned anyway. If lighting can be designed as a permanent feature from the ground up, the result can be stunning indeed. That is propably harder to do (but feasible) in an urban environment, but both street tracks and purpose built facilities could really "shine". Still, I hope things aren't rushed into. People seem to be impatient about making this happen.

[furnik]

also we in australia have very strong noise restrictions so if a jumbo jet cant fly over our citys at night i dont think they will let f1 cars rawing around albert park.

[Ray]

You guys are still too thickheaded. Just because it's F1 doesn't mean you have to 'test' it. Jesus you guys are the most frustrating group of people.

[DaveKillens]

That's the way F1 works Ray, political agenda piled upon political agenda piled upon committees and anyone else who may have an interest. Just recall the USGP at Indy, and how much of a screw-up it became. I too do not like all the unnecessary and wasteful politics, but it's like rain.. it will happen and you just have to learn to live with it. NASCAR may have reasons for being sneered at by others, but I do like their business model. They never forget that fans drive the sport, and run a very real dictatorship. NASCAR decides what is to happen, and goes ahead and makes it happen. They answer to no one, and their attitude to drivers and teams is simple.. take what we're offering or leave, because we have teams and drivers lined up to replace you.

As a side note, thanks to all contributors, who add their personal and unique perspectives.

[checkered]

Ray, presuming that

I fall under the category of "you guys", my remarks would've propably been about "the same" even if it wasn't about F1. Consider, say, an office building which is built to let in as much daylight as possible. Why would a business that operates outside the daylight hours want to invest in modifying such a thing when it could construct or buy something more suitable to its needs?

There's a lot of innate logic in most things that never meets our eye. And that's OK, since the point generally is that designed things let us concentrate on something more productive than figuring out the ... well, designed things. Looking at the Musco website, it doesn't seem likely that the Daytona International Speedway just had a couple of guys come in with electrical wire, duct tape and a wrench to set up their lights either. Now, I'm a big fan of cutting through the chase whenever possible. Sometimes it just seems to require the sort of perception required from an F1 driver.

I don't want to depress anyone, but I was once introduced to a study that had a statistic that went something like this (can't recall what it was right now, I'll edit if it comes back to me): An average office worker spends about an hour a day in meetings that are essentially useless to his/her function ... let's be conservative and say that's around 230h/year. A working career, if everything goes OK, lasts about 40 years. Do the math, and that's 1150 useless 8h working days in total.

Man, that's over three years. But hey, at least my productivity in doodles is high.

[forzasab]

Actually i have a question for Bernie-

Is this a "World" championship or a "European" championship???

Just thought i'd ask that as it seems your catering to you and your neighbours needs.

[SZ]

You guys are still too thickheaded. Just because it's F1 doesn't mean you have to 'test' it. Jesus you guys are the most frustrating group of people.

don't see why you need to get insulting on an open forum - if you're passionate about how easily possible night racing is, you'd be better off directing your frustration at those that run F1 rather than criticizing the observations of those that support it.

i'll reiterate that your not wrong in that lighting a track safely is technically possible. there's not much to argue with here - as you rightly point out, it's been done.

and it will be done in F1, and the organsational challenges the category imposes on itself will be overcome in time for GP's next year. it won't be as simple as 'call those involved in the US example' - and it very likely won't publically acknowledge drawing any knowledge from such events - but it will be done.

the other half of the argument is whether it's feasible for certain venues/races - 'feasible' means more than 'can we hook up some lights' - and reading between the lines there's one in particular event that's not very likely to live past it's current contract.

but hey, bring on night racing. bring back vegas and do it at night. hell, image the PR kimi would generate after a night race in vegas... that'd be worth it alone .

[ds.raikkonen]

...don't see why you need to get insulting on an open forum - if you're passionate about how easily possible night racing is, you'd be better off directing your frustration at those that run F1 rather than criticizing the observations of those that support it.

Dont worry SZ, ignore the insults, he does it quite often, the insulting thing...i hope he improves from now on.

[SZ]

not offended at all - just that if you have energy, put it where it's useful! write a letter...

said this a few posts ago...

if the forum wants to speculate on something more likely to happen, consider this on regional pride issues... what's a more likely location for the first night GP to be held next year, singapore or sepang?

dave i think a night GP at indy or vegas would be spectacular, but my money says 'malaysia boleh!'

and lo and behold on F1-Live...

'Malaysia's Sepang circuit chief on Tuesday reiterated he was ready to host Formula One night races from next year as the shake-up of Asian Grand Prix gathers pace.'

nice one bernie, give races to two local competing entities that won't want to be outdone by the other - one of the oldest management strategies to improve anything - use fierce competition as a surefire way of getting 1st-class results. we're at least guaranteed an interesting spectacle at sepang & singapore 08...

... (though i hope the organisers pull a rabbit out of a hat and prove me wrong) anyone still think melbourne's in the hunt?

[checkered]

Glen Crompton from

pitpass.com seems to think pretty much along the same lines as the majority of posters here. Edit: I didn't get the direct link to work properly, so you'll just have to find it. The directions should be obvious.