Champcar has been racing at night for years (Lemons has done a few as well).
They typical have some lights at the corner stations in order to SEE the corner stations as well as big yellow caution lights so you don't have to try to see a flag at night.
Make sure your lights are good. Tint your mirrors and possibly back window. Have a battery operated light in the car.
We also put a red trailer marker light on the backside of the rearview mirror that the driver can't see directly, but does light the interior of the car so you can still see gauges, etc...
We just did a 24 at Nelson Ledges (also the middle of nowhere) In June. It is an acquired taste. Some people LOVE racing at night (like me). Some people hate it.
When you look at how dangerous racing crappy cars is, adding the darkness element doesnt really add another order of magnitude to the danger. I would say it is less dangerous than racing in the rain.
Toyman01 said:
Lemons has announced that the April event at CMP will be a true 24 hour race. 11 am Saturday to 11 am Sunday.
CMP is in the middle of BFE and at night it's as dark as 20' up a well diggers ass. Even allowing for lighting on the cars, I am uncertain as to the safety of a race where the corner workers can't see E36 M3 and the drivers can't see the corner workers. This seems like a receipt for disaster to me.
Have any of you gents run a Lemons race at a unlit track? How was it? Can you see the corner stations before you are on top of them? Can you see a car that is sideways in the middle of the track? Or is it just tip toeing around the course waiting for daylight?
At the moment it's a no go for me unless some of you can tell me it isn't as bad as I think it will be.
Make sure you have lights or reflective panels on the side of your car and some battery operated lights inside. If your car dies, at least people will still be able to see you.
I've done a couple of 24hr VIR and Road Atlanta races. I'm not sure if Lemons has the same requirement, but Chump requires that your number plates be lit. Race control communication was via lights at all the flag stations - mostly yellows at night. So, pretty easy to manage. The biggest thing I can stress is to test your lights before the race, aim them properly, and make damn sure they won't fall off during the race.
In a 24hr race like Chump or Lemons, some amount of contact is inevitable. We made our lights removable so we could install them at the 6pm driver change just to be sure they'd still be there when it got dark. One of the chinesium mounts still broke and we lost one. We had an ebay LED spot-light across the front and two flood lights on the corners for apexes. See the following videos, taken by the same camera in the same car, for why you want good lighting.
E36 M3 lighting (4 7-inch "rally" lights that we didn't bother to aim)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lvEeGCN5ZQ
Good lighting (28-inch LED bar in front, two 8-inch bars on the apexes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIrHtKi-Bnw
With lighting sorted, I really enjoyed driving at night. It seemed almost peaceful, clicking off lap after lap in the dark. I highly recommend it. But I also like driving in the rain, so maybe I'm just a weird one.
