A Musselburgh father-and-daughter to star on the water in SuperStock Championship

David and Ashleigh Finlayson will race the P1 Panther powerboat in championship events in England, Wales, Scotland and Denmark.

Davie has been racing since taking up waterskiing in the 1980s and, by the age of five, Ashleigh, or Ash as she is better known, had followed her dad across the UK and European circuit.

Over the three decades since then, Davie has competed internationally in a number of series and, at the age of 17, Ash joined him to race in the National Zapcat Championship, where they picked up the RYA Best Newcomer to Powerboating award in their first season.

For the last two years, Davie and Ash have been competing in the ThunderCat Racing UK Championship.

Their first outing in the P750s culminated in a second-place finish in the Stock Class at the European Championships in Gibraltar.

Davie got his first taste of P1 SuperStock racing last summer when he grabbed a last-minute opportunity to jump into the navigator seat of a P1 Panther race boat in the Scottish Grand Prix.

Davie, who manages Finlayson Auto Salvage in the Honest Toun, is also looking forward to their new challenge.

He said: “When the opportunity came up to crew the Inverclyde boat, I jumped at the chance.

“I can’t wait to get on with the season and I am really looking forward to our home race on the Clyde.”

Ash, meanwhile, added: “Crewing the Inverclyde boat is certainly going to be a change from the smaller powerboats that I am more used to.

“I can’t wait to take on this challenge and see what we can achieve in the P1 SuperStock series this summer.”

The boat will make its 2017 debut in Denmark in early June, and just two weeks later it will head home to the River Clyde, where Davie and Ash will be cheered on by thousands of Scottish supporters in Greenock.

The next stop for the Inverclyde team will be Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire, before the P1 SuperStock UK Championship returns to Scarborough in September.