Barry Lee to make Speedway comeback.

Barry Lee will return to race on a speedway track for the first time in 37 years on Sunday.

The four-times World Hot Rod Champion and ex-British Rally-Cross title-winner, gave up a promising speedway career after he had been involved in a fatal crash in which a young Australian lost his life.

West Ham's Dave Wills came down during a junior match at Custom House in June, 1965, and Lee, riding for rivals Hackney, had no chance of avoiding him.

Lee will make his speedway track comeback when he takes on four-times World Speedway Champion Barry Briggs in a unique race between a rally car and a speedway bike at Coventry International Motor Speedway on Sunday, September 15 (3 pm) during the three-hour spectacular Briggo's Extreme Races.

Lee, who was voted into 16th place in a Millennium Poll of the world's top drivers, has won eight major championships at world and European level in rally-cross, hot rods and saloon car racing.

Over the last four decades he has collected nearly 1,500 trophies in a sporting career that has seen him drive almost everything with four wheels and an accelerator from a Ford Anglia to a Centurion tank!

During that time he has been British Champion in both rallycross and truck racing and only recently decided on a temporary retirement from V-Sport racing (driving a V8 Jaguar), where he took four poles, eight wins out of eight, and three track records in the opening four meetings of the year.

He said: "I started my career on two wheels and I owe my career since to the very limited time I had in speedway. It's all about the art of throttle control, looking for traction and I have been looking for that ever since I've been on four wheels.

"I started my racing career on two wheels, I was a reserve and getting up to the team which included riders like Colin Pratt, Les McGillivray, Roy Trigg and Howdy Byford at the time.

"I loved the atmosphere of speedway and I loved the shale. I was at Hackney for a season and a bit and then I had a bad accident.

"I was in the Hackney reserve team and we had a match at West Ham. I had just started my career when I had the accident in which Dave Wills was killed. I stopped after that and never made the team as a permanent member although the Hackney promoter Len Silver thought I could have turned out as a professional.

"After the accident I went into auto-cross, did that for three years and won each round of the Players Number Six auto-cross championship."

Another of his claims to fame is that he was TV's Driving Force champion, teaming up with celebrity Aneka Rice to beat a host of big names including Nigel Mansell, Derek Bell and the late Tony Pond in a series of stunts which included driving a tank and a JCB digger at Bovingdon army base.

Lee's special challenge sees him behind the wheel of of a 4 x 4 WRC Ford Focus rally-car against Briggs on a conventional 500 c.c. speedway bike.

Lee, 58, recalls: "We still have some unfinished business from a quarter of a century or more ago when I raced with Barry on a 1,000 metre track at Esbjerg in Denmark. He was racing bikes and I was in a works Ford Escort in a series of car races on the same circuit.

"At that time Barry challenged me to a race claiming he would be quicker but we were never able to get it on. Now's our chance!"

The clash of the World champs is one of 27 motor-sport events at Coventry Stadium in Briggo's Extreme Races.

The speed-packed programme includes two and four wheeled action that includes speedway, moto-cross, quads, sidecars, spectacular moto-cross jumpers, current World Ice Racing Champion Per-Olov (The Ice Warrior) Serenius trying to break the all-time four lap track record and the unveiling of the world's first Moto-Slide bike, a Yamaha that converts from a moto-cross to speedway bike.