Noise mapping of motor races events with innovative indicators

The sound of sports cars is usually considered by spectators an important feature of the motor races since it provides a complete and immersive experience in the event. Anyway, such an event can be extremely annoying for those living nearby the circuits due to high sound pressure levels and the timing of cars' pass-byes. Not a minor concern is the psychological and psychoacoustic aspect, deriving from the perception of an intrusive presence of the circuit activity, responsible for the violation of the home comfort. First, specific noise indicators (i.e., Race Equivalent Level - REL and Lap Equivalent Level - LEL) are assessed for different races. Therefore, REL values are used to tune the sound power levels of an equivalent point-like source describing the event. Such information is given as input to a noise map modelling tool. Finally, noise map results are validated by comparing them with recorded ground truth values. The results are promising, since the final mean absolute error is 2.4 dBA. The proposed approach has the advantage of possibly considering other sources, for instance, road traffic.