Fife racing circuit to host three meetings in six weeks

Rory Butcher competing at Cheshire's Oulton Park in June (Pic: BTCC)

It hosts its first-ever Ferrari Owners’ Club gathering this coming weekend and two touring car meetings.

The Italian club are heading to Scotland’s national motorsport centre, near Dunfermline, for their away round in 2023 as racing Ferrari V8s contest the Superperformance Ferrari Club Classic race series this Saturday and Sunday.

Track-day sessions and owners’ parades will also be held over a weekend featuring Scottish Motor Racing Club and club championships too.

Racing Ferrari 328s, 348s and 355s, mainly from the 1980s and 1990s, will be competing on the two layouts at Knockhill, using the clockwise layout on Saturday and the anti-clockwise configuration on Sunday.

Saturday and Sunday, July 22 and 23, see the Kent-based British Racing and Sports Car Club stage what might well be the largest car race meeting ever held at Knockhill, with seven visiting championship rounds being contested, some in Scotland for the first time.

Up to 200 competitors will be taking part, the majority of them newcomers to the track.

Topping the bill will be the return of the TCR-UK Touring Cars championship after a five-year absence.

Former British Touring Car Championship race winner Chris Smiley, of Northern Ireland, is reigning champion and local interest will centre on Callum Newsham, from Inverness.

The BTCC itself returns on Saturday and Sunday, August 12 and 13, and it will see no fewer than four Scottish drivers vying for podium positions, including Kirkcaldy’s Rory Butcher.

Some 15,000 race fans are expected over those two days, the championship’s seventh meeting of the year.

Butcher is currently ninth on the contest’s leaderboard, with 102 points, 116 adrift of front-runner Ash Sutton, though there are another three rounds in the meantime, at Croft in North Yorkshire on Saturday and Sunday, July 29 and 30.

“The first half of the season is done and dusted and I’m feeling slightly frustrated with how it’s gone,” said the 36-year-old.

“We have very high expectations as a team and we haven’t met them so far.

“I feel we have a small mountain to climb right now but I know we have what it takes to get back on top.”