British champions in the lower spec Zapcat category, moving up to powerboat racing’s equivalent of formula one racing brought an unexpected complication to Dave and Ashleigh Finlayson’s team dynamics.

Previously reliant on a combination of experience and intuitive understanding of what they required of one another, life should have been made easier by the technology available on the ‘Spirit of Inverclyde’ P1 Panther – but this is a father-and-daughter partnership.

“That’s the first time we’ve raced a boat that has comms, so she was telling me what lines to take, but obviously I had the steering wheel, so I was deciding what lines I was actually going to take,” Dave explained.

“So we went from discussing tactics, to taking what she thought were the wrong lines and I thought were the good lines, to having a full-blown argument and then silence.”

He laughed as he explained it and, in the cold light of day, Ashleigh can see the funny side too, while offering additional insight into how the competitive relationship works.

“Let’s just say we had a bit of a disagreement over which lines to take and he told me he was the driver, he had the steering wheel and said ‘I’ll decide where we’re going,’ which I definitely had a reply for, but I think that’s where the father-daughter thing comes in because you’re not scared to say anything you want to say,” she observed.

“If you’re just two friends in a boat together you maybe don’t call each other out quite as much as we do and I think that’s part of how we’ve got to where we have, because we’re very open and very willing to call it out.”

It pretty much has to be that way in a sport in which, as has happened, Ashleigh has been flung from the boat when a manoeuvre has gone wrong, while on one occasion they even found themselves giving an unexpected lift to their rivals when their boat landed on top of them.

“It was double-deckered which is not how boats are meant to be and he was on the under-side of it,” said Ashleigh.

“I pushed it off further on to him. I didn’t mean to, I was trying to push it off him, but it didn’t work out quite like that and I trapped him underneath it.

“That one wasn’t bad because we were both in the boat. There have been a few others that have been almost my fault, because it’s my job to keep the front of the boat down and when it doesn’t it flips up, so there have been a few times when that happened, but because I’ve been out of the boat, I don’t get the blame so much. That tests the relationship in a different way.”

Naturally her mother is not slow to remind Dave of his responsibilities, but as Ashleigh noted: “I think he still gets told to take it easy and be nice, but he knows I’ll still be there going: ‘Come on, push it harder.’”

Aware that she is something of a trailblazer in what has traditionally been a “petrolhead” man’s world, Ashleigh believes the nature of their relationship benefits both of them, reining in her father’s more reckless instincts and consequently upping their chances of finishing races.

“He will never be able to remove the fact that I am his daughter in the front of his boat, so there are a few situations where he’ll go into a corner and, I won’t say he’ll pull back, but in his head he’ll be thinking it through a lot more because he knows who’s in the boat with him,” she said.

This weekend’s Scottish Grand Prix of the Sea in Greenock is, however, their first opportunity to properly challenge their rivals after their introduction to this class of racing in Denmark last month in which there were competitive restrictions because they were newcomers at that level.

“We came good in Denmark,” said Dave. “For our first race in the P1 Panther it was a great event for us, because we were classed as the rookies so had to start on the outside of the grid which was quite frustrating when we qualified quicker. But we got a good result.

“We were equal fifth [out of 11 boats] overall, but because the boat that was equal with us had a quicker qualifying time they’ve got fifth position, we got sixth and our best result was a third in one of the races which I was really pleased with.”

In front of a home crowd which, if last year’s inaugural event is anything to go by, will attract tens of thousands to the shore side in Greenock, they aim to move up through the gears in a boat that is capable of reaching 80 mph.

“We’re going to push hard because we always do. Hopefully there won’t be any mechanical issues and the gloves are off,” Dave promised.