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The History of Fluorescent Race Car Markings and Pit Signaling

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This Paint Had a Purpose You'd NEVER Guess! (Holman Moody's Breakthrough Ford GT40s)

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What happens here

The video begins with an introduction to Lee Holman, whose family's involvement with Holman Moody led him to witness firsthand the innovations in motor racing. Lee recounts the necessity for enhanced visibility in night races during the 1960s, a period before radios were common in race cars. He explains that traditional pit signal boards (chalkboards or painted numbers) were hard for drivers to see, especially at speed and in low light. This led him to develop specialized fluorescent pit signal boards. His inspiration came from psychedelic posters that glowed under ultraviolet (UV) light. He describes using a 'Magnaflux light,' a powerful UV lamp typically used to detect cracks in metal, by taping it to a column at the start of pit road at Daytona. To complement this, he bought all available cans of 'Day-Glo' spray paint from local hardware stores, which race crews then applied to the noses or fenders of their Ford GT40s. This created distinct, glowing markers that allowed pit crews to identify their cars and convey messages to drivers at night. Lee also discusses similar, but distinct, pit signaling methods at Le Mans, where cars slowed down significantly at 'Pit Signal Corner' allowing for visual communication via telephones connected to a signal box. He touches on the rapid fading of Day-Glo paint in sunlight and the broader evolution of racing safety, including the introduction of seatbelts and fuel cells, highlighting how early racing was incredibly dangerous with minimal safety measures, often resulting in severe injuries or fatalities for both drivers and spectators. He shares personal anecdotes, including being hit by a spinning car in the pits and witnessing a fatal accident due to a driver sitting on his seatbelts, emphasizing the learning curve and the continuous drive for safety innovations in motorsports.

Goal: Gain historical insight into motor racing communication and safety innovations.

Tools and materials

  • Day-Glo Spray Paint — Painting portions of race cars (noses, fenders) to enhance visibility under UV light
  • Duct Tape — Securing the Magnaflux light to a pit road column
  • Ford GT40s — Visual aids during the discussion
  • Magnaflux Light — Providing ultraviolet light to make fluorescent paint glow, originally for detecting metal cracks
  • Pit Signal Boards — Manually displaying messages, lap times, or instructions to race car drivers
  • Telephones — Communication between pit crew and pit signal area at Le Mans

What they say

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started to jump out of the way and it hit me in the butt and sort of launched me over our tool boxes lee holman's dad john was the co-founder of holmen movie with ralph moody lee grew up to see the formation of this company and live through everything that it did including up to now so he's got some pretty crazy stories about just about everything including the origin of the random neon paint on these gt40s that until he just happened to tell us about this had no prior explanation the diglo thing was was interesting because i had made a couple of signal boards bit signal boards because at daytona the drivers come down off the banking and go into the sports car center of the track and right there was uh where the pit signal boards were this before they had radios in the race cars and everybody else was using either chalk on a blackboard or there were some professionally made numbers and letters but they were hard to see and the drivers are going by so quick i came up with the idea similar to the old psychedelic posters that kids had in college where they had ultraviolet lights and the dayglow colors on the posters would just glow in the dark you know you just that was really bright and interesting so i did some dayglow pit signal boards that had little battery packs and they had two black fluorescent lights on them and the drivers really love the the visibility of the pit signals and we found that in our night practice that you couldn't tell which gt40 was coming down pit road because all of the headlights were so bright and there was no real track lighting to to light the track up itself so the the pit bull um the pit fellows couldn't figure out what what car was on pit road until it actually pulled in and of course you wanted to go out and motion your car into the pit and get his attention so we took a magnaflux light which is very like a 400 watt um black light that you used to check for cracks in metal and uh duct taped that up to one of the the uh columns that held the pit roof down at the starter pit road and i went to every hardware store around that area and bought all of the spray cans of dayglo paint and brought them back to the track and they the different crews would grab a collar and just paint the nose of their car or make some sort of shape on the nose of the car some of them ended up with with just a day glow panel in front of the radiator and some of them had um something like this on the fenders just depending upon which team did what and…

Auto-generated from the video audio.