If you’re within a certain age range, you may have spent weekend afternoons in your youth playing Mario Kart, the seminal Nintendo game. You may even remember passing the sticks around between friends and competing in the game’s individual time trials, one driver at a time.
Among that game mode’s defining features: A translucent “ghost car” that represented the current leader in a given trial, allowing other drivers to chase after it or, ideally, pass it on the way to a faster time. Similar features have dotted various other racing video games through the years, from the Gran Turismo series to Forza and F-Zero.
And now, we’ve begun to see this Mario Kart feature show up on television broadcasts for real auto races. In the same way it added intrigue to the video game, it brings real excitement to the process of watching a single car drive around a track solo. But it’s not just for fans; this technology is even making an impact on the inner workings of the sport of auto racing itself.
Track Star
The ghost car seen from the cockpit camera's view on an IndyCar broadcast. The translucent car is superimposed on the video image during televised broadcasts. Courtesy of SMT
Auto racing broadcasters have long struggled to make qualifying trials entertaining. Qualifying involves just a single car on the track at one time, racing against the clock for the best times to determine their starting order in the event’s actual race.
“Qualifying, candidly, is boring,” says Gerard J. Hall, founder and CEO of SportsMedia Technology, known in the industry as SMT. “From a TV standpoint, you’ve got a camera taking a picture of this car, it’s in the center of the frame, and you’ve got one announcer saying to the other announcer, ‘Sure looks like he’s going fast, doesn’t it?’
“There’s not really much to compare it to … Until you get something relative to that car to let you know, is it winning? Losing? Is it gaining for the qualifying lap?”
Hall and his team have solved this problem; auto racing viewers can now see a visual indicator of the leading qualifying car’s positioning during its qualifying lap, helping them instantly discern whether the current driver is improving on or falling behind the leader’s time. But the ghost car has traveled a long road to find its way onto these broadcasts.