The Scottish XR2 Championship enters its twelfth season in 2007. The cars all began life as road going 1600cc XR2s and apart from a roll cage, fire extinguisher system and various minor modifications, including stripping most of the interior, remain much the same. You can often see the original road car dashboard, steering wheel, etc on a racing XR2, just to show how close they remain to the road cars that they started life as. The cars run on a control Kumho tyre and the parity of the car configurations allow for close and exciting racing, with the onus very much on driver skill to make it to the front of the field.

This class of racing is one of the best on offer by the SMRC and provides entertaining battles right down the field every time. In fact, the high quality of racing, and the low budget required to get started, make it so popular that it isn't unknown for an extra qualifying race to be required just to whittle the field down for the Championship race! 2006 Champion Scott Fraser is back once again along with family members Iain and Al, with the main competition once again likely to come from 2006 runner-up Andrew Winchester, the ever present Peter Cruickshank and the extremely quick Willie Davidson. Scott Morrison, Derek McDougall and Ross McColm are also known to be very quick.

A large number of XR2 drivers, including 2005 Champion Nick Sanderson and sometimes driver/mostly mechanic/Santa Claus lookalike Charlie Thornton, as well as Willie Davidson, Norman Dalgleish, Derek McDougall, Andrew Winchester, Ian Maughan and ex-XR2 driver turned MG star, turned Mini driver, reborn as an XR2 driver Dave Colville, are enthusiastic users of this website and its forums so feel free to ask them any questions regarding the series. In fact the idea for this website came about when fellow XR2 driver and forum member John Findlay suggested it towards the end of 2002 since then, all the drivers have been a huge help in getting this project up and running.

Following the success of the National (UK) Legends Championship, an SMRC series of the popular class of racing was introduced in 2000. From its humble beginnings with a field of just six cars, this series has grown into an amazing success story with fields in it's eighth season this year expected to top twenty more often than not.

These bizarre looking cars are 5/8 scale replicas of 1930s American saloon cars fitted with 1200 or 1250 cc motorcycle engines and a sequential gearbox. Their stiffened suspension makes them handle like karts in the dry, and everything about the series makes for overtaking and excitement as the cars' miniature size encourages three-wide racing through the corners and last ditch overtaking attempts. Also mixing things up is the random grid order for the first of the three races that makes up each Legends Championship round. The grid order is then reversed in the second race and for the final the day's fastest drivers start from the back. All of this combines to make for some very exciting opening laps! The first two races of each round are 8 lap sprints with the final taking place over 10 laps. The Legends will run their season entirely at Knockhill this year, including a support-slot at Knockhill's Jewel In The Crown Event - the British Touring Car Championship in September!

Ben Mason, Gerrard McCosh, Alex Knight, Jon Jon Higgins, Robin Drysdale, Carol Brown, Frank Hynds and David Thorburn are just some of the star names you can expect to run at the front all year with a number of newcomers joining the midpack, including three scholarship winners making their start at track racing.

The Smartycars.com Mini Cooper Cup is a very different beast to the original Mini Series. The grid is a lot larger and the cars are now full on racing cars as opposed to the road going machines they were to begin with, with gutted interiors, body kits, Superchips ECUs, Yokohama tyres and racing suspension. A stepping stone to National competition, the cars have seen several incumbants move on to bigger things, such as Jamie Cleland and Finlay Crocker switching to the Renault Clios and Oli Mortimer moving to National Mini Coopers.

At the front of the field this season we are likely to see Vic Covey Jnr, Ian Milton, Paul Wilson and Mark Dryden. Up and coming driver Jordan Gronkowski won the IF Motorsport Scholarship in the off-season and will drive for the team this year. With each round featuring a double header, the second race sees a random draw see a certain number of cars have their finishing positions reversed on the grid for the second race to increase the opportunity for more racing.

New for 2007 is the SMRC Formula Ford 1600 Championship. After some very promising fields showed up at the Classic Speedfair in 2006, the idea was put forward with regards to a new series. Lots of drivers were interested, Graham Brunton was happy to get involved at the heart of the series and the SMRC managed to convince the MSA to grant Championship status based on the large amount of interest.

The concept began in the Sixties and became the bedrock of single-seater racing across Europe. Replaced in later years by more modern and expensive machinery which eventually waned, it has always held a place in the hearts of single seater fans and has been having something of a revival in these cash-strapped times. All cars use 1600cc Kent engines and the grid is split into Class A for for cars made between 1990 and 1993 and Class B for pre-1990 cars.

The field is a who's-who of Scottish racing with names like Taylor, Di Resta, Mason, Brunton, Thorburn, Hourie, Kerr, MacGregor, Legget, Kirkaldy and Geddes all making an appearance, indeed, a grid of up to twenty-seven cars is expected.

The Scottish Saloon and Sportscar Championship is an amalgamation of a number of different classes of racing in which almost any car can be entered. Basically if it has four wheels, lights, an engine and a roll cage then it can be entered! The classes are as follows: A - Turbo or Normally Aspirated cars on slick tyres, B - Road tyred cars over 2000cc, C - Road tyred cars between 0 & 2000cc, D - Kitcars and Caterhams all on treaded tyres and over 1600cc plus motorcycle engined cars, E - Kitcars and Caterhams all on treaded tyres between 0 & 1600cc.

The field tends to be a mix and match of cars which just so happen to be ready to race at the time of the event though entries from Robert Pritchard and Craig Brewster's awesome modified Caterhams, Andrew Morrison's MG ZR, Bill Carr's Mallock, Iain Cowie's Caterham, Colin Simpson's Marcos Mantis and a host of other regulars can usually be expected.

Photo by Michael Booth

At the other end of the spectrum we have the Scottish Classic Sports and Saloons. This exhibition series runs to a set of classes based on year of manufacture i.e Class A = 0-1400cc, Class B = 1400-1800cc and Class C = over 1800cc.

While no points are scored, this series is a showcase for some very good looking classic racing cars doing what they were built to do and the front of the field is likely to see Stan Bernard's Porsche and Al Fleming's Lotus Elan taking up where they left off last season with some classic battles. Olly Ross will likely feature with his Lotus Europa once again as will a host of other exotic and exciting machinery.