Coventry kick off Thursday night racing.

Coventry Bees begin a new era of Thursday night racing when they host Wolverhampton in their opening home meeting of 2004 at Brandon (Thursday, March 18). The Buildbase Bees have moved from their traditional Saturday night race day for the first time since the Second World War - a situation forced on them by the weekend demands of the Grand Prix series and other World Championship events.

A major refurbishment programme is also taking place at the stadium, and though the work is still a few weeks away from being finished, Coventry fans will notice a big difference. The old terrace bar on the fourth turn has gone - it has been swallowed up the new state-of-the-art Brandon Grill restaurant - and so too has the pits bar on the first bend. That has been turned into three hospitality boxes.

The general aesthetic feel of the stadium has been much improved, and there have been big changes to the Coventry team as well. Making their home debuts will be newcomers Chris Harris, Bryan Yarrow and Morten Risager, three young guns who have replaced Billy Hamill, Lee Richardson and Ryan Fisher from the team who finished runners-up to Poole in both the Elite League play-offs and the KO Cup in 2003. Bees boss Colin Pratt will be back on board for the first home meeting, having missed Monday night's 49-44 defeat in the Air Tek curtain-raiser at Wolverhampton following a knee operation.

The opening night parade will be led by a collection of Harley Davidsons, and there will be both a minute's silence and a lap of honour by former riders such as Roger Hill, Rick France and Jim Lightfoot as a tribute to ex-Bees favourite Les Owen, who died in January.

Coventry are also in action at Belle Vue on Monday night in a KO Cup first leg tie. The second leg is at Brandon on Thursday April 1.