Do you buy track day insurance?

[Sam3]

With most street insurance companies having no coverage (or sketchy at best) for the track, do you buy track day insurance from the likes of Hagerty and OpenTrack? Do you pay for some, depending on the organizers and the tracks? Or do you just take the risk and don't buy any?

The prospect of the car getting totaled (can happen easily if you hit a wall or slide into the dirt and roll over) makes me very anxious without track coverage. Checking some quick quotes, you end up paying in the the range of $200 to $300 per event (depending on how much you assess the price of the car, after market mods, and deductible). Between the cost of insurance, track day organizer fees, and the ever increasing price of consumables these days, it can become a very expensive hobby.

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[Kotaas]

Tracking is definitely an expensive hobby my last track event I saw a guys ZL1 go off course and catch on fire. Local FD was called but didn’t arrive until 30 min later on the fenders and hood survived

not too sure if that event offered track insurance but they forsure didn’t offer me any lol

 

[tinyman392]

With most street insurance companies having no coverage (or sketchy at best) for the track, do you buy track day insurance from the likes of Hagerty and OpenTrack? Do you pay for some, depending on the organizers and the tracks? Or do you just take the risk and don't buy any?

The prospect of the car getting totaled (can happen easily if you hit a wall or slide into the dirt and roll over) makes me very anxious without track coverage. Checking some quick quotes, you end up paying in the the range of $200 to $300 per event (depending on how much you assess the price of the car, after market mods, and deductible). Between the cost of insurance, track day organizer fees, and the ever increasing price of consumables these days, it can become a very expensive hobby.

If it were me, I would buy it. But it depends on the person I guess. You could compute how many uneventful track days you'd need to have for it to not pay for itself:

(Cost_of_vehicle-deductible) / coverage_cost​

​

So let's say your car is valued at 40000 dollars with a 10000 dollar deductible and the cost of coverage is 500 per event (on average). If you plug in the numbers you get:

(40000-10000)/500 = 60​

This means that if an accident occurs that totals your car once in 60 HPDEs, then the coverage will have paid for itself. However, if you go 60 HPDEs without any incidents then you would have lost out on money. Granted this is a worse case scenario for totaling your car. There are incidents where smaller things can happen (non-mechanical body damage for example).

Tracking is definitely an expensive hobby my last track event I saw a guys ZL1 go off course and catch on fire. Local FD was called but didn’t arrive until 30 min later on the fenders and hood survived

not too sure if that event offered track insurance but they forsure didn’t offer me any lol

Track day insurance can normally be purchased through a third party. I'm not sure if they'll offer it to you if you show up to the track the day of unless they have some sort of agreement with a specific insurance company.

 

[MadMage]

I had thought that my insurance company covered HPDE events. (Pretty sure I remember asking the a few years ago and they said yes to HPDE, no to racings). I called them again before my latest event (last weekend) and they said no not at all. So I bought from Haggerty. Did give me piece of mind, but I do feel that it's an expensive waste. But, I think it's smart, though a lot depends upon the track and the event. See below...

Tracking is definitely an expensive hobby my last track event I saw a guys ZL1 go off course and catch on fire. Local FD was called but didn’t arrive until 30 min later on the fenders and hood survived

not too sure if that event offered track insurance but they forsure didn’t offer me any lol

This amazes me, the groups that I know that run events in Arizona have safety trucks (with fire equipment) and an Ambulance on site. We had a Miata catch on fire on Saturday, truck was there, fire was out, car was off the track, all within five minutes. Fire was out before I even saw the smoke.

If you are running with a group that doesn't have safety equipment on track, then not only would I have insurance, but I would be sure to be equipment my car with an extinguisher and be wearing a firesuit, boots and gloves.

 

[Kotaas]

I had thought that my insurance company covered HPDE events. (Pretty sure I remember asking the a few years ago and they said yes to HPDE, no to racings). I called them again before my latest event (last weekend) and they said no not at all. So I bought from Haggerty. Did give me piece of mind, but I do feel that it's an expensive waste. But, I think it's smart, though a lot depends upon the track and the event. See below...


This amazes me, the groups that I know that run events in Arizona have safety trucks (with fire equipment) and an Ambulance on site. We had a Miata catch on fire on Saturday, truck was there, fire was out, car was off the track, all within five minutes. Fire was out before I even saw the smoke.

If you are running with a group that doesn't have safety equipment on track, then not only would I have insurance, but I would be sure to be equipment my car with an extinguisher and be wearing a firesuit, boots and gloves.

They had a little truck on stand by that went to try helping but the fire spread quickly they were pretty much forced to wait on the local fire department. All things considered they got there pretty fast lol

 

[REDRAGN]

I don't personally buy it but after watching a few cars get totaled at Road Atlanta last weekend I might look into it next season!

 

[taiso0019]

Seems like a waste of money but it saved my ass once already at a TNiA event back in 2019.

I still need to do a write up of the whole claim/repair process. Mostly common sense stuff but there's a tip or two in there that may help someone. I figure now that we have a subforum for these topics (finally!) it may come in handy.

 

[caraholic]

Unless you don’t care about setting $40,000 on fire I would. I always get track insurance very cheap insurance if something happens. When I sold my 2013 E92M3 back in 2015 the new owner took it to Road Atalanta and ran it straight into the wall. Car was totaled and no track insurance so he had to eat the cost of that car.

 

[dwag0588]

The high residual value of these cars makes track insurance a no brainer. Almost nobody is upside down on a loan for a CTR, but you’d have to be pretty wealthy to absorb the loss of something worth around $40K.

 

[REDRAGN]

Track insurance is for suckers...

This repair will cost less than the track insurance cost for the event. However, had it been worse, track insurance would have been a lifesaver!

 

[shaqin]

I've been debating this for a while now. If it costs 10+k before anything is covered by insurance, plus ~$300-500 every time, I lean toward not getting it. Also, who decides whether it's totalled because my impression is that my personal insurance is not involved... At that point my thinking is, what are the odds that I'm going to do more than 10k of damage during this event. Honestly, if there's enough chance of that, I'm probably sitting that event out or I need to rethink some things.

 

[MadMage]

I've been debating this for a while now. If it costs 10+k before anything is covered by insurance, plus ~$300-500 every time, I lean toward not getting it. Also, who decides whether it's totalled because my impression is that my personal insurance is not involved... At that point my thinking is, what are the odds that I'm going to do more than 10k of damage during this event. Honestly, if there's enough chance of that, I'm probably sitting that event out or I need to rethink some things.

Deductible amount varies depending upon your choices when buying your policy. If you want a lower deductible, then chose a lower one. As with any insurance policy, an insurance adjuster decides if it is totalled and usually supported by one or more estimates as needed.

My thoughts are I'm not worried about insurance if their is car to car contact (i.e. a few thousand in body work), but rather a fire or impact with a wall where the car is substantially damaged or totalled. When I run tracks that have walls or similar that I might impact I get insurance. If I start modifying the engine where fire becomes a possibility, then I will get insurance as well.

 

[QuasarMotors]

This may be a odd approach to this but I do not use track insurance for HPDE and there is a good reason why. It keeps me in check at the track. What I mean is I know I do not have it so I drive to the level I am capable and in that area there should be no reason for me to go off track. Fire is always a danger but with a proper extinguisher you have better odds of not getting a lot of damage. We will all make mistakes on the track and it’s called an accident for a reason but you shouldn’t be pushing that hard to go off track during a HPDE.

Now if I was competing in a event where I would be pushing the bounds of my capabilities by all means I would get insurance but for normal HPDE there should be no need.

 

[Sam3]

Now if I was competing in a event where I would be pushing the bounds of my capabilities by all means I would get insurance but for normal HPDE there should be no need.

The major track insurance companies don't cover race or competition. Only HPDE.

 

[Boostd4]

This may be a odd approach to this but I do not use track insurance for HPDE and there is a good reason why. It keeps me in check at the track. What I mean is I know I do not have it so I drive to the level I am capable and in that area there should be no reason for me to go off track. Fire is always a danger but with a proper extinguisher you have better odds of not getting a lot of damage. We will all make mistakes on the track and it’s called an accident for a reason but you shouldn’t be pushing that hard to go off track during a HPDE.

Now if I was competing in a event where I would be pushing the bounds of my capabilities by all means I would get insurance but for normal HPDE there should be no need.

I would tend to agree with this, but I've seen many "careful" drivers go off at Thunder Hill that has very few walled sections and a ton of runoff. The problem is that runoff has a lot of loose dirt at times that can cause a rollover in the event of getting 4 wheels off. I personally witnessed an Elise going straight into a wall at Thunder hill at well over 100mph during an HPDE due to a failed brake line. My point is that stuff happens no matter if you're going 5/10ths or 10/10ths.

I'll be honest, I've had my share of "hero" moments at HPDEs and the danger is still there regardless of how easy you're going. But, as with anything YMMV and it's up to you to make that call.

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