Trackday Insurance Yes or No ?

[Areyousure182]

Still researching into a R400D. Do most people bother to insure them when doing trackdays or is the consensus that because they are fairly cheap to replace bits on that its not an essential item to spend money on ?

I have done several quotes ranging from Tesco which was by far the cheapest for a road policy at £260 to Competition Car Insurance who give 6 free trackdays but the policy shoots up to £700.

Some apparently "great for kit cars" companies wont even touch it as its over £21k in value.

Thoughts ?

[Camoradi]

I recently switched my road policy to Greenlight insurance who do trackday cover on my roadsport for £45 per day. They won't cover Castle Coombe events but this could be cost effective for you depending on how many track days you plan to do per year

[framerateuk]

I'm with greenlight for my main car and 7. I always insured my Megane on trackdays with them for £40 a go. I haven't bothered with the 7, but I think they's pretty decent value.

[Areyousure182]

Thanks for the suggestion but Greenlight wont cover anything over £25k in value. Shame really as £45 a trackday sounds like a great price.

I`ve been with Mannings for my regular performance cars and they did a policy that is a road policy but covers any amount of trackday use with a 10% XS - anyone know if that type of policy exists for a Superlight ?

Edited by Areyousure182 on Friday 14th March 16:15

[anniesdad]

I've just got a quote for my, '14 Supersport 140, £28k value, 5 trackdays UK and Europe, 5k pa, Garaged, 43 yrs old, 1 small bump fault accident Jan '14, No NCD (surrendered years ago), 3 points - £590.00 with Henderson Taylor, £718.00 if I include commuting.

[Tango7]

Personal preference I suppose as to whether your have TD insurance or not. A lot of owners are with CCI or REIS and they have 4-5 free track days included in their policy but the excess will be 10% of the cars value with a minimum £1,000 for the cars at the lower end value-wise. For your R400D, the excess could easily be £2.5k and you would have to do quite a bit of damage to pass this point especially if you are handy with the spanners and can carry out some of the work yourself (stripping the damaged items off and removing parts/panels to allow access for repairs to take place), Folks would generaliy bite the bullet and pay for wing replacements, smashed nosecone, even a ripped off front corner themselves as the likely bill will be under the £2,5k excess or thereabouts. However, the big concern is if you stuff the car and need a long front plus wishbone assembly, wheels and repaint. If you give the job to someone else to repair, you wouldn't see too much change from £6k i'd expect and if you went a bit further and needed a new chassis, you could add another few grand to the total.

So the likelihood is that you wouldn't bother to claim for the smaller items but if you need a long front to replacement chassis, you might think otherwise about the premium you pay now. I expect your premium is due to being a new seven driver with no past experience of owning a caterham? Maybe go with a cheaper provider this year and don't do any track days and use it for road use only and then at renewal time use REIS or CCI or similar with TD cover included when you a year's NCB to apply and I'd expect your premium to drop by a very large amount.

HTH

T

[sjmmarsh]

I'd take the cover and get the car on track. The cover will give you peace of mind and, on track, you will get a feel for what the car can do - something you won't get if you only drive on the road.

Think.of it as carastrophe insurance though, as minor danage will not be covered because of the excess.

Steve

[Areyousure182]

anniesdad said:

I've just got a quote for my, '14 Supersport 140, £28k value, 5 trackdays UK and Europe, 5k pa, Garaged, 43 yrs old, 1 small bump fault accident Jan '14, No NCD (surrendered years ago), 3 points - £590.00 with Henderson Taylor, £718.00 if I include commuting.

Thanks for that ... I`ll give Henderson Taylor a go as I`ve never heard of them

Tango7 said:

Personal preference I suppose as to whether your have TD insurance or not. A lot of owners are with CCI or REIS and they have 4-5 free track days included in their policy but the excess will be 10% of the cars value with a minimum £1,000 for the cars at the lower end value-wise. For your R400D, the excess could easily be £2.5k and you would have to do quite a bit of damage to pass this point especially if you are handy with the spanners and can carry out some of the work yourself (stripping the damaged items off and removing parts/panels to allow access for repairs to take place), Folks would generaliy bite the bullet and pay for wing replacements, smashed nosecone, even a ripped off front corner themselves as the likely bill will be under the £2,5k excess or thereabouts. However, the big concern is if you stuff the car and need a long front plus wishbone assembly, wheels and repaint. If you give the job to someone else to repair, you wouldn't see too much change from £6k i'd expect and if you went a bit further and needed a new chassis, you could add another few grand to the total.

So the likelihood is that you wouldn't bother to claim for the smaller items but if you need a long front to replacement chassis, you might think otherwise about the premium you pay now. I expect your premium is due to being a new seven driver with no past experience of owning a caterham? Maybe go with a cheaper provider this year and don't do any track days and use it for road use only and then at renewal time use REIS or CCI or similar with TD cover included when you a year's NCB to apply and I'd expect your premium to drop by a very large amount.

HTH

T

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Its all subjective I spose. I would never have tracked my GT3 without insurance but the caterham is significantly cheaper by comparison. Still a big lump if it gets written off though !

sjmmarsh said:

I'd take the cover and get the car on track. The cover will give you peace of mind and, on track, you will get a feel for what the car can do - something you won't get if you only drive on the road.

Think.of it as carastrophe insurance though, as minor danage will not be covered because of the excess.

Steve

Thankyou for your input aswell. Trackday insurance is not new to me so I know about the XS being higher when on track and if you are going to make a claim then you need to have a big shunt to make it worthwhile ... so to speak.

I think I`ll take the sensible approach and get it for the first year and then see how i am getting on with the car and how many times I`ve ended up pointing the wrong way

[casbar]

Yes, I wrote my R300 off at Castle Combe, so the insurance was well worth it. Only gripe I had, is, I did this 4 years ago, but even though it was a track incident and I had track day insurance, in the eyes of the insurance companies I had made a claim. So it has impacted my car insurance since then! But if i hand't had insurance, I would have been 18k down

[Tango7]

Another worth trying is www.need2insure.co.uk who are based in Nottingham.

They gave me a very competitive quote and it included 5 track days and if you exceeded this number, you could buy another block of 5 track days cover for £76 in total

[DCL]

I think you need to decide how many trackdays you intend to do.

Insurance might be worth it for a limited number of days, but if you do a lot, the sums don't add up so well. I have regularly tracked for 6 years now, and accident damage has never been been more than £1000 (including some hefty contact with the tyre walls) - all of which would have been less than the excess, so I would have ended up paying for it anyway.

There's always the risk of a 'total write-off' but probably not as big as you think on the track where barriers are soft and cars all go the same way.

[The Orig Fergie]

Try LLoyd and WHite I found them very good for my supersport

[Areyousure182]

casbar said:

Yes, I wrote my R300 off at Castle Combe, so the insurance was well worth it. Only gripe I had, is, I did this 4 years ago, but even though it was a track incident and I had track day insurance, in the eyes of the insurance companies I had made a claim. So it has impacted my car insurance since then! But if i hand't had insurance, I would have been 18k down

I rang one particular insurance company that stated they dont cover Castle Combe due to one corner being a bit tricky. Obviously there has been a few incidents they have paid out on and the underwriter has coped the hump !

Tango7 said:

Another worth trying is www.need2insure.co.uk who are based in Nottingham.

They gave me a very competitive quote and it included 5 track days and if you exceeded this number, you could buy another block of 5 track days cover for £76 in total

Will give them a go ta

DCL said:

I think you need to decide how many trackdays you intend to do.

Insurance might be worth it for a limited number of days, but if you do a lot, the sums don't add up so well. I have regularly tracked for 6 years now, and accident damage has never been been more than £1000 (including some hefty contact with the tyre walls) - all of which would have been less than the excess, so I would have ended up paying for it anyway.

There's always the risk of a 'total write-off' but probably not as big as you think on the track where barriers are soft and cars all go the same way.

Thats what I was thinking and hence why I posed the question. Clearly a rub along the tyre wall is not going to cost the earth to fix like it would on say a GT3.

The Orig Fergie said:

Try LLoyd and WHite I found them very good for my supersport

I`ll give them a go aswell thanks

cheers all

[Murph7355]

casbar said:

Yes, I wrote my R300 off at Castle Combe, so the insurance was well worth it. Only gripe I had, is, I did this 4 years ago, but even though it was a track incident and I had track day insurance, in the eyes of the insurance companies I had made a claim. So it has impacted my car insurance since then! But if i hand't had insurance, I would have been 18k down

Does the 18k down include the premium(s - if you did more than 1 track day without accident), excesses, loss of NCB etc??

I'm in the "no" camp. As others have mentioned, the excesses are usually such that when you balance all costs out, you'd have to do something pretty massive to make it worthwhile. Especially if you aim to do multiple track days (as you likely will).

The best insurance for me is to know that if I spank it, or get too close to someone who may spank me, then I'm out of pocket (Didn't help on one particular track day, but on balance I'm in credit ).

[Areyousure182]

Utterly amazed at the massively different premiums. Need2Insure want £82.50 for a block of 5 trackdays which is very reasonable. REIS want £180 per day and the former is only £100 more to start with for the yearly policy. Lloyd White were very competitive until they realized this is the only car I insure and dont own another one so had to adjust policy to the Caterham as my main car which bumped the price right up. Trackday Insurance with them was only £10.60 extra after the inital 5 free ones. ( think I`ll revisit them to try and talk sense into them as the mileage restriction is still the same )

Just goes to show that its always worth a ring round...

[Toaster]

Areyousure182 said:

Still researching into a R400D. Do most people bother to insure them when doing trackdays or is the consensus that because they are fairly cheap to replace bits on that its not an essential item to spend money on ?

I have done several quotes ranging from Tesco which was by far the cheapest for a road policy at £260 to Competition Car Insurance who give 6 free trackdays but the policy shoots up to £700.

Some apparently "great for kit cars" companies wont even touch it as its over £21k in value.

Thoughts ?

Interesting,

Whilst most accidents may be lowish (its all relative) and you may not even be involved in one ever...but what happens if its gets complicated if some one writes their own car off and someone else's ....http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=18&t=1332239&mid=168747&nmt=Claim+from+a+track+day

I wouldn't bother with any insurance at all its only a track day....

[Steve Campbell]

R400D owner. REIS for me....great service...good premium, with 4 track days included.

Never needed them, hope I never will but if I'm going to have an "off"....I want the peace of mind if its a big one.

[Areyousure182]

Just to finish the topic off - After tonnes of phone calls to all the suggested companies and loads more ontop. I have gone with Caterham`s own insurance through Lloyd & White. They were by far the cheapest offering the maximum cover for the least, including 5 trackdays, european cover , 7000 miles and a very cheap xs should the worse happen. Any extra trackdays over and above the 5 included are £10.60 per day and the xs on track is only £1000 as apposed to 10% the value of the car which would have meant over £3k !
Despite the policy not attracting any No Claims Bonus they are kindly keeping mine on file so that it does not expire should I decide to leave the caterham world I can continue where I left off.

Strangely , a couple of other brokers quoted KGM who are the underwriters but could not offer what L&W could so the usual suspects of CCI and Mannings etc were out the game.

Thanks to all who contributed

[casbar]

Murph7355 said:

Does the 18k down include the premium(s - if you did more than 1 track day without accident), excesses, loss of NCB etc??

I'm in the "no" camp. As others have mentioned, the excesses are usually such that when you balance all costs out, you'd have to do something pretty massive to make it worthwhile. Especially if you aim to do multiple track days (as you likely will).

The best insurance for me is to know that if I spank it, or get too close to someone who may spank me, then I'm out of pocket (Didn't help on one particular track day, but on balance I'm in credit ).

No what I meant by the 18k was I would have had to spend approx 18k to get the car back on the road. So by having insurance, after the excess I walked away with the insured cost. I did have a good run though, used to do 7 or 8 track days a year and did that for 6 years without incident.

[Irrotational]

Get it "free" with Reis..my limited mileage insurance is less than £300 a year incl 4 TD's...