Video: The Zapcats in action at Ocean Terminal during last year's championship (copyright Tiger 24)

Andrenalin junkies and speed freaks from across Britain will be in Edinburgh this weekend to watch a motorsport tournament with a difference.

Zapcat’s UK National Championship will be taking place in Leith docks by Ocean Terminal for a second year and its organisers are promising plenty of thrills for spectators and spills for the competitors.

Twenty, two-person teams will take part in the tournament throughout Saturday and Sunday. Each will take part in a series of eight boat heats, reaching speeds of more than 50mph in the engine heavy, inflatable catamarans. At top speed on corners, the boats can pull in excess of 3G, similar to a Formula 1 car.

Ex-racer and current Zapcat Director Martin Jupp said the Leith course could throw up some interesting challenges for the competitors.

He told STV News: “It’s an unusual location, purely because obviously it’s an enclosed dock and it’s flat, so it’s a different type of racing. The racing is a bit more fast and furious, a bit closer, whereas ordinarily these boats would be racing in the surf. So it’s challenging for the pilots and the co-pilots because they’ll be racing in a slightly different way to we usually do. But it’s good, particularly from a spectator’s point of view, because we’ll have the boats and the course so close to the docks.”

Around 40 people will take part in this weekend’s competition, ranging in age from 16 to 50. Around 90% are private enthusiasts or rookies with no large scale sponsorship, however, there are some professionally sponsored teams, including the Delta Jets who will be among those representing Scotland.

Mr Jupp reckons the event will attract a large crowd, and he says they’ll be promised a good time.

He added: “I think if people haven’t seen a Zapcat race, they’ll be really quite surprised.  In other forms of motorsports, whether it’s cars, boats or anything else, they keep their distance from each other. This is pretty full on and the boats do make contact.

“If you like motorsport, if you like racing, you need to come down and see this. It’s very different from, I think, what people have seen before. I think that people who like watching motorsports, they like to see crashes and bumps and competitive racing. And this weekend, people will go for a swim, boats will tip over and the racing will be close. Motorsport doesn’t really get much better than that.”

For spectators who leave looking for an adrenaline rush of their own, the organisers are also working in partnership with M&D, who will be running a funfair on the site throughout the weekend.