Dunfermline Press | Sport | Driving ambition puts Derek on the right track

Thursday, 4th December, 2008

Published: Thursday, 3rd January, 2008 09:40

Driving ambition puts Derek on the right track

By Gary Fitzpatrick

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Derek Butcher

Pic by: Dunfermline Press

TODAY Knockhill stands as a great success story – Scotland’s motorsport centre, Superbike meetings attracting huge crowds, a magnet for corporate visits and employing more than 50 full-time staff.

Motorsport greats such as Sir Jackie Stewart, Stirling Moss, Damon Hill and the late Colin McRae have given the circuit their seal of approval.

However, the picture was very different when Derek Butcher bought the then ramshackle arena almost 25 years ago.

“It was like Colditz camp,” laughs Derek when he recalls the early days when it was something of a one-man-and-his-dog operation.

“Coming up here on cold, wet, misty mornings looking at the old rusty buildings – and that was just summer – I’d be thinking ‘What have I done?’”

Derek, then a keen motor cycle racer, bought the track from farmer Tom Kinnaird.

The late Tom, himself a great motorsport enthusiast, built the track and then offered it to Derek when he had just sold his alarm business.

“I was looking to go into another business and did have an inkling about Knockhill but Tom made up my mind by physically coming and telling me it was for sale.

“My first tasks were to establish basic things like water, electricity, toilets and getting a PA system.”

In those early days, Derek used to lock up the track during the winter months and popped up at the weekend to make sure everything was alright – very different from these days when the venue is busy all year round.

After months of preparing the track for the first event since he took over and over-spending the advertising budget, Derek was dealt a body-blow when the meeting had to be cancelled because of snow.

Undeterred, Derek (56) put in the hard graft which would only pay dividends a long way down the line.

“We’d spent six months getting the track ready for that meeting. It was unbelievable.

"I knew you just had to put it behind you and walk on although I was thinking the alarm business maybe wasn’t so bad after all.

“I think I was conditioned by racing where you have so many disappointments, so many lows then you get a high and you realise that’s why you’re doing it.

“You get that good result and that keeps you up there. Knockhill’s just like racing in that way.

“To begin with there was just me and two others. Elaine has been here from the start. I remember I’d go out for lunch back then, come back an hour or two later and say ‘Any calls?’ She’d just say ‘nut’.

"We didn’t get many people phoning back then. Now we get 10,000 calls a month.

“The average is about 7000 a month but around the Superbikes and other big meetings it goes ballistic.

“Although it’s a racing business it’s not been a fast-track business in its growth. It’s been slow in its growth. It’s slow but it’s established and it’s sound.

“In any business the most important thing to put into it is sweat and hard work. That’s the only way you’ll succeed.”