Mud, Sweat and Gears

With a new dawn of LED lighting technology happening in World Rallying, we joined the Ford M-Sport team as it trialled the very latest Lazer Lamps upgrades against the more traditional, HID rally lighting pod. Which would be better? There was only one way to find out!

Few forms of motorsport place as great an emphasis on visibility as rallying, particularly when you consider the number of WRC stages run in murky surroundings, or demanding tarmac roads run at dusk or dawn. The WRC has for a long time been dominated by HID lighting setups, the kind you’ll doubtless have seen crammed into the bulky light pods that perch atop the bonnets of the vast majority of top-tier rally cars. Lazer Lamps, the world’s leading exponent of LED lighting technology, has set out to change this with their new range of Triple R Competition LED optics. Lightweight and robust, the Lazer Lamps Triple R range includes a number of innovative features and traits that make them ideally suited to the WRC, and these go a long way toward explaining why they’ve recently been chosen by M-Sport for use on their Fiesta R5 WRC cars.

The need to optimise two very different but similarly complex examples of engineering (M-Sport’s Fiesta and Lazer’s Lamps) resulted in a day of testing, with M-Sport keen to assess both the long-range prowess of the bonnet-mounted lights and the bumper-mounted cornering versions of Lazer’s new LED units, plus their wider performance upgrade for the Fiesta R5. M-Sport’s HQ at Dovenby Hall in Cumbria is home to some of the sport’s finest test facilities, including a purpose built gravel rally stage, complete with coniferous pine forests looming over the road, off-camber bends and blind crests. The perfect test bed for the Lazer Lamps Triple R Competition range, in other words.

“We’ve been working hard to ensure that the Competition Triple R optic is up to the task at hand, providing piercing light straight ahead and a broader spread of light either side of the car, the latter thanks to our Reeded Lenses,” explains Lazer Lamps MD, Ben Russell Smith. “M-Sport has used variants of filament, HID lights for decades now, so for us this test is primarily about proving that LED lights can now out perform HID.”

The lights sported by the M-Sport R5 Fiestas for the test included both bonnet and bumper mounted units, a combination that’s been proven to offer light emission properties that are both broad and far reaching. A comparable setup from PIAA, long M-Sport’s light supplier and the leading name in regards HID technology, was also tested extensively on the day, with the aim being a clear comparison between both setups.

A day of extensive (not to mention wet and muddy) testing reveled a number of things, not least that Lazer Lamps hardware is every bit as good as more traditional filament offerings from rival firms, and that in many cases it offers demonstrable benefits. Side-by-side comparisons of LED and HID lighting solutions revealed what everyone at Lazer already knew, that their product was able to offer a broader, homogenous spread of light over a greater distance, and with a greater intensity from the beam. M-Sport’s engineers worked closely with those from Lazer Lamps and the former were swift to pinpoint one area particularly worthy of praise, namely the ‘tall’ spread of light emitted by the LED units.

“We saw a number of advantages from the Lazer Lamps, notably their thermal and power efficiency, low weight and the much taller spread of light offered by the bonnet-mounted optics,” explains Laurence Kalvas, M-Sport’s Development Engineer. “We’ve seen that the taller spread of light in particular can improve the visibility in the pitch motion of the car, so when accelerating and braking hard.”

The undeniable power of the Lazer Lamper Competition Optics was borne out in empirical, side-by-side tests, but every bit as important was the subjective data drawn from the test drivers themselves. Confidence is the be all and end all when it comes to throwing a heavily modified and highly specialised four-wheel drive hatchback down a slippery gravel stage at the dead of night, and valuable seconds can be lost or gained because of it. In this respect the performance of the Triple R Competition Optics was praised once again, both test drivers quick to highlight the invaluable extra light generated by the bonnet-mounted ‘high intensity LEDs,’ giving them extra awareness of approaching hazards and lighting up the tree line in a manner that the rival HID offering simply couldn’t match. This confidence equated to fractionally faster overall times through the M-Sport test stage, something which can be expected to be magnified when applied to longer, real world stages.

While there’s no doubting the amazing illumination properties of the Competition LED Optics and their suitability to WRC work, there are also a number of other highly significant benefits, many of which aren’t immediately noticeable. FIA regulations demand that all R5 cars must run lights in a pair, a regulation that’s traditionally required the addition of an extra bracket midway along the width of the bonnet in order to be met. Lazer’s solution consists of a carefully engineered mounting bar, a light weight connector which links both LED units together securely.

Lazer Lamps hardware has been designed to be versatile and adaptable, with one of the most obvious examples being their reeded lenses and bespoke carbon fibre light pods. These give teams a huge degree of control over the light emission properties of their LEDs, with adjustments able to be made from stage to stage and according to the individual preference of the driver.

Further evidence of this flexibility can be found in the unique E-Boost feature found on Lazer’s Triple R Competition lights. Specially developed to allow cars fitted with Competition lights to remain compliant with ECE lighting regulations, E-Boost effectively imbues the LEDs with dual output functionality. In practice this means that there are two separate settings, one optimised for public roads, one for closed stages. In road legal mode, the lamp is running at 60% of it’s output capacity, switching to 100% output when the boost cap is fitted to the side of the lamp.

The sheer amount of light emitted by the LED units means that the lamps themselves can be made far smaller than those found in traditional lamp pods, reducing drag and the risk of damage from flying gravel, while also contributing to a reduction in overall weight. The Lazer Lamps Triple R Competition Optics also draw less power than HID equivalents, and run at reduced temperatures.

Another, less tangible benefit of Lazer Lamp hardware is the wealth of experience boasted by company director Ben Russell-Smith, a man with an impressive understanding of automotive lighting systems, and a background in exterior lighting projects for the likes of Ford of Europe and Nissan.

“We set out to be the leaders in automotive lighting and it’s clear now that our products have delivered just that. Time and time again, our products deliver weight savings and performance improvement over other lighting solutions from leading manufacturers and brand owners,” explains Ben.”

Ben’s passion and understanding of the science behind his products is backed up by an equally capable team of engineers, all of them based in the UK. Indeed, all product research, development and manufacturer is carried out in this country, safeguarding British jobs and helping to ensure that all Lazer products are manufactured to the same high standard.

While the Triple-R Competition line has been designed solely with professional motorsport in mind, the wider Lazer Lamps range features a number of products aimed at road-going vehicles. Indeed, the firm’s off-road lamps have won plenty of praise from all sections of the four-wheel drive community thanks to their exceptional design, strength, light weight, CAE optimised heatsink and class leading light emission properties.

The conclusion of the test revealed M-Sport to be more than satisfied with the performance of the Lazer Lamps Triple R Competition Optics, so much so that they’re now standard fitment for all the team’s Fiesta R5 and WRC cars and the recommended light for all their customer cars and development packages.

“A very good test I would say, with some very positive developments,” says Laurence Kalvas. “In particular the bonnet lamps; we’ve achieved a much taller spread and depth of light. The location and positioning of the bumper-mounted Reeded Lenses may need to be adjusted, but we’re very impressed by the amount and quality of light generated.”