THE British Speedway Grand Prix arrives in Cardiff next weekend, and officials face a race against time to put the track down inside the Millennium Stadium.

With the IRB World Seven series taking place in the capital until late on Sunday night, organisers won't be able to start work on creating a racing surface until mid-day Monday at the earliest.

The operation is expected to take the best part of five days before the riders gather for the official practice on Friday.

That's only the day before the world championship meeting brings speedway back to Cardiff for the first time in almost 50 years.

"It will be five days of hard work but because of the retractable roof on the stadium we should not be held up by any possible bad weather," said British Speedway Promoters Association press officer Nigel Pearson.

Even so officials expect to be working around the clock in order to have the stadium ready in time.

Before they can even consider laying the track they have to remove the pallets of grass from the outside of the playing surface.

Because of the time scale, only the grass which needs to be moved will be, a large section will remain in the centre of the track.

Once the pallets have been removed a safety fence must be put up so that the people laying the track have a level to work to.

Then several trucks will bring in the track over the course of a day. It is here that the real problems begin.

The track needs to be tyre packed down to make it safe enough to ride, and organisers anticipate having to set up shifts over the space of 24 hours to make sure it is done in time.

Even so Pearson is confident that everything will be ready come Friday morning. "The riders will be arriving on the Friday morning for the first of two practice sessions and it is hoped that if there are any problems they can be resolved between those sessions," he said.

Poland's Tomaz Gollob won the first of this season's six Grand Prixs in Germany and will again be among the favourites. But Mark Loram of England, the reigning world champion, will be desperate to improve on his performance in that meeting when he failed to qualify for the final stages.