Race Insurance - Top Tips for Taking Out Your First Policy

If you are starting out motor racing this year, you will almost certainly wish to look at getting the race car insured. This article covers a few of our top tips for taking out that all-important race insurance policy.

First up, consider that you may want the car to be insured from the first date of ownership, rather than from the first race date. In addition to the car itself, racing accessories can be very costly and if they were to become damaged during storage or in transit, this could have severe consequences to your racing campaign. Racing accessories then should also always be fully insured, even if they are separate from or have not yet been installed onto the car.

You may wish to begin by obtaining an agreed valuation for your race car (and any valuable accessories) from the insurer, which will help cover the car or equipment's true replacement value, rather than their standard book value (which could well be naught in the case of some racing equipment and accessories!). Be sure to include the value of any parts which you have with the car, but not necessarily installed at the present time (such as spare engines etc). With this in mind, you'll probably want to check the terms and conditions of your policy for any specific exclusions and limitations.

To bring the cost of the race car insurance down, you may wish to take out a 'parts only' policy rather than a fully comprehensive package. Here, the cost of replacement parts are covered but not the labour cost involved with fitting them. If you are a particularly competent mechanic or engineer, or working on a particularly tight budget, this may be a viable option - provided you are willing and able to carry out the repair work yourself, in house. Any cover for race suits, racing helmets and other race accessories may need to be arranged separately, however.

Finally, you may also wish to check the terms and conditions for what will happen if the car is damaged beyond economic repair and is written off. A policy which includes salvage retention rights will allow you, the owner, to salvage any undamaged parts from the vehicle in the case of an accident.

Liability insurance may be required if you intend to use the vehicle on track during an open day (commonly called track days here in Britain) - whether it be due to a general 'racing incident' or in the case of a component failure, you may be liable for damages. Many racing circuits, track day companies and racing series offer detailed liability insurance as an optional extra to all participants - this is likely to be one of the cheapest ways of getting cover - but these policies are unlikely to cover those all-important racing helmets and plumbed-in race fire extinguishers.

By Richard Harwood