Bristol to have a 4-screen display that hangs over infield (Photo)
Bristol is joining sister tracks Texas Motor Speedway and Charlotte Motor Speedway in the giant television game.
The track unveiled the “Colossus” on Wednesday, a four-screened display that will be above the infield at races starting in 2016. And no, the feature won’t be mounted on a giant pole in the middle of the infield. It will be suspended from four cables via support towers outside the corners of the grandstands around the track. Take a look.
Here are the specs of the screens. The display, according to Bristol, is the largest “center hung” feature of its kind.
Each of Colossus’ four custom-built screens is approximately 30 feet tall by 63 feet wide. In total, the system hosts nearly 54 million LEDs and 18 million pixels. At 6mm pitch, the pixels are grouped tighter than the large-scale outdoor displays in Times Square. The result: a glimmering visual experience capable of offering 281 trillion different color combinations, and one that’s 23 times brighter and 25 percent sharper than the typical home HD TV.
The display will hang from a halo-shaped truss and features an additional circular LED display beneath the screens which measures nearly six feet in height. Between the screens and the LED ring, that’s more than 8,500 square feet of high-resolution, active viewing area.
Colossus also boasts a state-of-the-art, 540,000-watt audio system powering 380 3-way loudspeakers and 48 stadium subwoofers, enough to make any rock star squirm with envy. By contrast, the current system hosts 2,400 watts of power, with only 10 2-way loudspeakers and 8 subwoofers.
The track also says that the feature weighs 700 tons. Bristol Motor Speedway is owned by Speedway Motorsports Inc., which also owns Charlotte and Texas. Both tracks have monstrous televisions located outside their respective backstretches. Texas Motor Speedway’s TV also has a name: Big Hoss.
Both Charlotte and Texas are 1.5 miles in length. Bristol is just over a half-mile long and has grandstands around the entire track. Putting a screen where those two tracks have them isn’t possible.
We must admit that when we see cables at a track, it’s hard to forget what happened at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 2013. The cable to Fox’s cable cam snapped and injured fans and damaged cars as it was whipped around.
Bristol said these cables are a lot stronger. The cabling will weigh 117 tons and the largest diameter cable is 63 pounds per foot. For perspective, the track said that the cables are larger than the suspension cables on the Golden Gate Bridge.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
