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

The four-times 𒀰World 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 thꩵree-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 worꦑld 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 sportin🐓g 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 racꦍing 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 speedwa𒈔y. 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 an🌺d 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 a🎃t Hackney ܫfor 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 a🐲ccident 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 oꦯf his claims to fame is that he was TV's Driving Force champion, teaming up with celebrity Aneka R🌳ice 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 bಞ☂ike.

Lee, 58, rec🍸alls: "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 Brℱiggo'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.