In 2007, the North Carolina region of the SCCA decided to take the bold step of requiring illuminated number panels on all cars to their 13 hour endurance race.  One of the biggest problems in night time endurance racing for corner workers and safety officials is identifying car numbers - particularly at corners where there are no lights. After seeing the ELumaBoard by King RAT Motorsports at the 2005 and 2006 races on a handful of cars, the region make arrangements to get boards for all entries in 2007.

“It was a difficult task,” said Alex Ratcliffe.  “We had to get to a price point and create a kit that would work on all types of cars. We have been developing a race car kit with the Electroluminescent technology for about 3 years. The challenge was making it fit into club racing as it is rather expensive to make reliable.”

The product is essentially an electroluminescent flat panel light powered by a small DC/AC inverter that uses a 12 volt power supply.  The kits were shipped out prior to the event with a handful delivered to the track at the last minute.  All the competitors did a great job installing the kits and getting them functioning.

“This is a fairly extreme environment, so we were expecting some problems,” said Alex.  “But, after the first night practice, we only had 4 non-functioning kits out of 80 cars."  Of these, 4 problems were related to wiring issues, which were resolved before the race start.