Night race in Fuji?

With the lighting in Singapore being such a technical success, Bernie is thinking about other night races. Obviously only races in Asia would make sense from a timing perspective.

During the pitwalk before the race, they mentioned that Bernie is thinking about a night race in Fuji in the future. Fuji???!!!!

While I'd love to not have to watch the race in the middle of the night, I cannot imagine how that would work: The lights in Singapore were mounted right next to the track wall. How would that get accomplished in an open track like Fuji? If the lights get placed too far away from the track, then there isn't enough light.

I could see a night race in Melbourne (if it wasn't for the environmentalists' opposition), but not in China, Japan or Malaysia.

Comments?

 

I work closely with lighting as part of my daily job.

I would say that one should not assume that the kind of lighting that was used in Singapore is the only type of lighting available Rather than the lighting happenning to be suited to the track, I think it was the other way around - the lighting that they used was chosen precisely because it suits the track, and at a different track, different lighting could be used.

The major problem that they probably would have in Japan, is that in Singapore there was just a lot of "ambient" light because they had tons of them at very short intervals. You can use very high powered and directional lights (like they use in a sports stadium) as well to provide daylight-like visibility. The problem with that is that directional lights produce shadows (like when you see 4 shadows around the players in a soccer or baseball game). That may be a problem for F1 drivers... I'd tend to think it wouldn't be, but I don't know.

If they had lots of the types of lights used to light up something like a soccer stadium, they could have the whole place as bright as a July afternoon, if they wanted to.

I sorta did like the night time thing, although I wonder if it wasn't largely because it was a novelty, rather than it being specifically better than a day race?

 

That would actually be a problem according to some drivers' comments. They were happy this wasn't the case in Singapore.

The reason for the night race is to keep the TV quotas up. If you look at the statistics, the Asian GPs are the least watched. Even more Europeans watched e.g. the USGP than a race in Asia. So it doesn't matter whether we find it cool to see a night race. F1 is primarily a sport for the European TV viewers and a night race makes it viewable like any Euro GP.

For the fans at the track, a night race must be extremely cool as they can go straight to partying.

For me personally, this is wonderful as I don't have the stamina to watch an Asian race live. I tape them so I can watch them at my usual Sunday morning hour.