Autoblog

Vehicular lighting is a crapshoot. Some vehicles offer a great swath of even coverage from their headlamps, while others make you feel like you're squinting through welding goggles at night. I went through the trouble to retrofit one of my cars with Cibié lamps running overwattage H4 bulbs. That effort required a couple hundred dollars of parts, a good amount of labor to wire up relays and triggers, and not everyone is willing to expend such time and money, even if it means you won't overdrive your lights so easily. Sweden's Visualeyes has trotted out the Rayzer, an auxiliary lighting system that mounts from the inside and projects a beam through the windshield. We're taking the product's SEMA appearance as an indication of legality in the US. From the amount of end-user modifications we see on a daily basis, nobody's enforcing the rules on lights, anyway. The system has been patented and was developed by former race car driver Lars Svelander after a close call with a deer.

The line-of-sight position is purported to be more effective and has the benefit of leaving the outward appearance unmarred. We'd be worried about throwing light spill onto the hood, or too close to the front of the car, for that matter. Too much light in the wrong place is a detriment to night vision, but putting more lumens down the road could improve your chances of not overdoing it. The Rayzer uses a pair of HID bulbs and is wired into the car's lighting system to illuminate when the high beams are in use. There's also a fail-safe circuit that will shut the Rayzer off if oncoming vehicles are detected – a good thing when you're blasting light through your windshield. No price has been announced, but trading the hours of cutting, crimping, and snaking wires for the ease of a 15-minute installation by a non professional sounds good to us, especially if it works as well as the pictures make it appear.

Thanks for the tip, Andreas!

[Source: Visualeyes]

Next year's Formula 1 calendar could contain an unprecedented 20 races. One of those races will be held for the first time on the island state of Singapore, and according to Bernie Ecclestone, it will be held at night. Both IRL and NASCAR have night races, so why not Formula 1? The reasons aren't just for spectacle, either: a night race in Asia will be more convenient for viewers in Europe and the US, and after all, for Bernie this is all about television revenue.

A few drivers, most notably current F1 World Champion Fernando Alonso, are against night racing. Alonso apparently imagines a number of horrors happening at the same time: "What if it rains? All those painted lines. What if the lights go out?" However, Singapore is a notoriously fastidious state that will work overtime to make sure its first F1 race and the first ever night race come off safely. It has also indicated that the race will be held at night only so long as everyone has faith in the safety of the event. Ecclestone, as usual, doesn't appear to be worried -- he's sure the race will happen after dark, saying "I think that we can stop discussion about the possibility of holding this race during the day."

[Source: Fox Sports]

Before setting the fastest lap during today's practice session in Melbourne, two-time Formula One champ Fernando Alonso made it clear that running the Australian Grand Prix at night was a bad idea. Joined by Ferrari's Felipe Massa, both drivers questioned whether enough track lighting would provide the necessary visibility to run a safe race.

The idea was floated by F1's chief Bernie Ecclestone and is currently under consideration by the Victorian Government. The thinking behind the idea is to make the race more entertaining for viewers, while at the same time allowing fans abroad to catch the event during peak viewing hours.

Several issues were brought to the fore during the discussion, and while safety was the biggest concern, the cost, both economically and environmentally, of lighting Albert Park might prove to be too prohibitive.

Considering that the open-wheeled racers regularly crest the 200 MPH mark, the idea of running a night race to attract more viewers may be a bit half-baked. Plus, we doubt that the team's aerodynamic engineers would be fond of strapping a set of driving lights onto the front wing.

[Source: Drive.com.au]