What could you learn from Hamilton?

Driving tips from Hamilton…Surely not?

So you have fleet car drivers and F1 Drivers. Complete opposite ends of the spectrum, right? Wrong, actually. OK, so now you’re probably wondering what possible similarity there could possibly be between the two. Let’s take the number one driver for Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton. His performance in the Formula 1 season last year was absolutely remarkable. However, this is the bit that gets me; he managed to cross the finish line as double world champion, whilst maintaining the lowest tyre and fuel usage. How the …? you may well be asking.

Well unfortunately I can’t tell you how he’s done that; but I can tell you what it tells us.

This shines new light on the myth that efficiency comes at the cost of performance and vice versa.

Are you aware of the savings?

You’re probably thinking, that’s all well and good but how can this be applied to the business model for successful Fleet mangement? Well, by learning to drive more efficiently a business could save £250+ per vehicle annually. If you run a fleet of 100+ cars that’s at the very least a £25,000 saving per year! A tidy sum I’m sure you’ll agree. A sum made even more impressive when you consider how easy this is to achieve.

Driving tips to take on board for your next road trip

 We’ve taken some inspiration from Lewis Hamilton himself. Here are our driving tips to improve efficiency for your next road trip. If Hamilton can do it, then so can we!

1. This might be an obvious one, but switch off your engine. We’ve all been guilty of leaving the engine running to warm up the car or to pullover and make a quick phone call. According to Hinkle Charitable Foundation, if your car is idling for any longer than 10 seconds, your wasting fuel. Simply switching off your engine will save you money, and who doesn’t like saving money in their business?

2. What’s the rush? We heartily recommend driving slower for many reasons. By slowing down you’re not only saving a considerable amount of money on fuel, you’re increasing yours and other drivers’ safety on the roads – and you can’t put a price on that!

We hope you take our Lewis Hamilton inspired driving tips on board! If you have any driving tips to improve efficiency that we haven’t mentioned in today’s blog, we’d love to hear them. Pop them in the comments below and we will add them into this blog.

3. Understand how your cars are driven – There are a multitude of fleet vehicle tracking solutions available which can give you access to rich information about where your cars are driven and what routes driver take. RunYourFleet offers a vehicle tracking service which reports both where your fleet vehicles are and how efficiently they’re being driven, including MPG reports and information about CO2 emissions. With this information you can work towards reducing fleet costs by having discussions with your drivers about the routes they take and the way they drive, which could reduce your fuel costs by over 10%.