5 GoPro mount positions for race car video

Race cars have several great places to mount your GoPro. These spots reveal the most racing action with minimal custom camera mount manufacturing. This article describes five potential mounting spots that can quickly improve the quality of your racing video with minimal testing.

Spot 1: Roll cage. GoPro’s standard roll bar mount allows you to place your camera just above the driver’s shoulders with vertical, diagonal, or horizontal bars. This location provides the best view of racing action in the car, whether it’s a drag strip, road course or oval. In addition to front views of truck and racing competitors, you can easily adjust the cage-mounted GoPro camera to capture the driver’s upper body, dashboard, gauges, in-car sponsor logo, and race traffic on both sides of the car. I will. You can get various effects by adjusting the camera angle and resolution a little. The roll bar creates a stable platform, so the video is usually vibration-free. If you want to capture the sound of a car, be sure to use the open-back GoPro housing cover.

Spot 2: Front bumper. This is one of the most dangerous places, especially for stock cars, drifters and road racers, as contact with competitors is unavoidable. However, attaching the GoPro to the front bumper has the advantage of creating realistic and exciting video. First of all, the low camera angle gives you a great sense of speed. In the lower half of the image, the road surface rushes under the car, giving the viewer a sense of speed. Second, close-up actions, tracks, crowds, etc. with previous competitors are captured in ways not otherwise available due to the wide-angle lens. The driver always feels close to action. To get this effect on the camera, it must be physically mounted near the action. Obviously, the risk of bumper mounting is the loss of the camera in the impact. This risk can be mitigated, but it cannot be eliminated by placing the mount from the top of the bumper to the rear or inside the grill area.

Spot 3: Roof. The GoPro Car Mount Kit includes a powerful suction cup mount that’s ideal for placing your camera on the roof of your car. The advantage of roof mounts is that they are free to see from any direction. The action is displayed in a “bird’s eye view” from a high angle. This allows the camera to capture interesting things like multiple cars, lots of trucks, and even trees passing by, starter flag stands, fans in the crowd, and more. Roof mounts are ideal for displaying the sponsor’s logo on the hood, roof, or rear deck lid of a car. Sucker mounts are sturdy and rarely come off. The downside is that the excitement and impact of being in the driver’s seat is not translated from top to top. However, this is one of the places that provides great additional footage for racing video.

Spot 4: Outside over the driver’s shoulder. This camera spot is gaining popularity due to the drifting of the crowd. The GoPro can be mounted outside the front and rear windows of the driver using a simple sticky mount or suction cup. It has the advantage of capturing the driver’s head and hands during the race, adding a great sense of action to the video footage. When the camera is in a high position, it provides some of the bird’s eye roof mount effect. Mounted underneath, it provides more driver action in the photo. Keep in mind that if the mounting is too low, competitors can strip the camera. The spots on the outside windows are great for very wide-angle views.

Spot 5: Inside pointing at the driver. This option offers a wide variety of where the camera is mounted and where it is focused. On the dashboard directly in front of the driver, turn his face back to see his eyes and reaction during the race. This makes the video very realistic and conveys the interesting human element of the race. Move the dashboard camera towards the center or distant corners to gradually capture what’s happening on the driver’s side and outside the car. These angles blend driver behavior with technical control movements and the activities of external competitors. Pointing your dash-mounted GoPro straight back is usually not optimal as 75% of the view is inside the car and you see very little racing action. There are many other spots, such as your feet, the door on the other side, and the handle facing backwards.

Attach one or more GoPro cameras to any of these locations in your race car to get the best footage for your next race video. Feel free to experiment with these locations or use them as a starting point.