Matt Maher: What hope for West Midlands speedway as engines fall silent?

The closure of the Birmingham Brummies, who this week raced for the last time at Perry Barr before it becomes the latest iconic venue to be transformed into housing, means a region once recognised as the hotbed of the sport is now without a single team or track.

Before Perry Barr, it was Monmore and before then, Brandon and Dudley Wood. There remains hope Coventry might one day return to Brandon but the fight remains a long one.

“It’s pretty frightening,” says Chris Van Straaten. “To think where we were just a few years ago, to where we are now. I am saddened and upset at the loss of Midlands speedway.”

For Van Straaten, the sport’s longest-serving promoter who was in charge of Wolves from 1986 through to their enforced exit from Monmore in 2023, the past couple of years have brought home the stark reality of just where the sport currently sits.

Despite an exhaustive search, he concedes “little progress” has been made in the search for a new home. No stadium suitable for hosting speedway exists within a 30-mile radius, while efforts to find a location capable of realising his ultimate vision, of a multi motosport venue in which speedway would play just one part, have so far been without success.

“I’m afraid I haven’t got a lot to say which will get people excited,” he says. “But I have to be honest about where things are.

“Any land I have enquired about has been on the proviso of a short-term lease because eventually it might be housing.”

It’s a bleak picture, for now, yet some hope might be found by looking back in history.

After all, this isn’t the first time speedway has disappeared from the Midlands.