UKs Motoring

The death of Indycar racer Dan Wheldon

Dan Wheldon was an extraordinary talent and it is ironic that he met his death on the last day of the 2011 season. He was not contesting the championship; the drivers who were, were Dario Franchitti and Will Power. Wheldon was racing for an entirely different challenge, and a controversial one. His challenge was to start the race from behind the rest of the grid and during the course of the race overtake all of the other cars; all 34 of them. If he had been successful he was would have collected $5 million prize money.

He was up for the challenge; his tweets expressed his intensity and determination to achieve it. It was not to be. The race was only 12 laps old before one of the most dreadful accidents in motorsport happened. 15 racing cars were involved in a pile up and Wheldon’s car flew through the air then exploded.

Motorsport is dangerous, but Indy Car racing is its most dangerous formula. Cars hurtle round a tight and steeply banked oval at speeds of up to 230 mph and there is simply nowhere to go should anything go wrong. Sadly it was an accident waiting to happen and one that will certainly change the nature of the sport.

Like just about all successful racing drivers, Wheldon started his sport when just a young child. He began driving Karts when he was just four years old and he competed in Karting against Jenson Button, often beating him. He had hoped to become an F1 driver, but he did not have the necessary finance so he crossed the pond to race in America. He was incredibly successful there and won the Indianapolis 500 on two occasions, including this year.

There have been large numbers of tributes from many who are or have been involved in the sport. Lewis Hamilton described him as an ‘inspiration’. And www.motors.co.uk would like to add their name to the many that have paid tribute to him.

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Car Leasing Makes Sense

The British public is in love with their cars, and there is nothing like that feeling of driving a brand new one. There is nothing quite like the feel of a new car; the fact that it has never been owned by anybody else; the smell of it too is quite amazing. Then of course there is the factor of street credibility. Although most of us will never admit it in public, we are part of a nation that really does like to keep up with the Joneses; preferably we like to keep a little ahead of them too.

It was Toyota who used that line “the car in front” and although Toyota is probably not in front at the moment, being in the car in front is something that appeals to our fundamental nature.

A problem with having the best car on the block, or if not the best one then one that people will take notice of, is that it an extremely expensive thing to do if we wish to buy it. Without going over the top, buying a relatively modest car is an expensive thing to do. Even a standard Honda Accord will cost us nearly £22,000 at the showroom. If we took out a loan to pay for it over a three year period it would cost us between £700 and £750 a month.

There is a solution though, and that is Personal Contract Hire. This is an alternative to purchasing a car in which we lease cars for a specific period and after that period return it to the company that we leased it from. If we look at how much it would cost to sort a Honda car leasing agreement, (we are using the online leasing price calculator that is available for free at www.frontierleasing.co.uk) then we can see that with a three year contract it would cost us only £400, a massive saving of over £300 a month.

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