Every time, even though my insurance says they cover it. Seen both sides; heard one too many horror stories of regular insurance not covering an accident that they were told they had coverage for. Was at NCP Grand Layout -5yrs ago and a friend with a new car got in an accident with airbag deployments. Lucked out and didn’t cost much to fix but still, it sucked. Talked to a few people at track days that have had to use Haggerty ‘or they bought from the company they originate with’ and they had good luck with their claims. There’s a good chance if you don’t pick a bad track for a novice like Road Atlanta and pick something with lots of nice sand and dirt and not much in the way of guardrails, say something like CMP you’d spin out and be ok if you oopsie’d. All the same, not a good idea if you can’t potentially eat the cash if something bad happened.

 

Thanks for the info. I am leaning towards getting it but was just wondering how much car pushing I'll be doing in hpde 1 if it was even a concern.

 

Most novice HPDE groups get an instructor, the GR free day pass you even have a Toyota ambassador that meets up with you for any questions etc. An instructor is great, always drive with one whenever possible, but ultimately stuff can happen since the driver can run out of talent, as we say. The other GR86 in my HPDE spun out and the poor instructor got covered in sand 🤣 Luckily the worst he’ll have to deal with is sand in his car for the rest of his life. Not everyone is that lucky. I’m glad you’re leaning towards getting it!

Which track did you pick?

 

I'm going to NOLA motorsports in louisiana. It's a flat track and doesn't look like too many guardrails.

 

You’ll be just fine and have a good time! The instructor will help out tremendously there.

 

I plan on getting insurance. $150-200 is worth it to me for peace of mind. It helps that the NASA event is free.

 

I've never gotten it... but to each their own.

I can say, check your policy. If the event is truly "drivers education"... meaning it isn't club racing and it isn't a TIMED event.... then it truly is education. I have seen some people get covered for an incident on the track by their regular policy, because they were able to prove it wasn't racing, it was drivers education.

 

Unless your insurance has a specific line about coverage for track events, they will deny your claim. Hoping you can convince them that its "driver education " is a long shot at best. In the unlikely event they do cover it, your next bill will be markedly higher.

Track insurance writes you a check. Then marks you as high risk

 

If you are making payments on your car and cannot financially stomach your car being destroyed it would be prudent to have track insurance (or some serious confidence that you actually have coverage under your regular auto policy which I think is rare these days).

It can happen at through no fault of your own no matter the perceived safety of the track. Personal example: A driver ahead of me punctured his radiator and coated the turn in point to a 75 mph sweeper. I spun and went straight off track and was then staring at multiple other cars rocketing off the track at quite similar trajectories. The course was quickly red flagged but it did not take long for that to unfold at a casual HPDE. Thankfully there were no collisions.