AUTONEWS

Richard Hammond & Porsche 911 GT3

Richard Hammond has made his long-awaited return to Top Gear…of a sort, anyway. Having taken several trips down memory lane with old sparring partner James May earlier this year, the former Grand Tour presenter is back testing at the famous Top Gear test track for the first time in more than a decade in DriveTribe’s latest YouTube video, doing so aboard a 992.2-generation Porsche 911 GT3. As he does so, Richard Hammond also offers up a few interesting behind-the-scenes secrets and anecdotes about his former life on the TG test track.

Though his “blast down memory lane” starts with a slight stumble (Hammond briefly forgets which way round the circuit-cum-former runway he’s actually supposed to go), the Top Gear tidbits are soon coming thick and fast, inter-cut with archive footage from the series’ glory days. Originally designed as an authentic racetrack by the Lotus Group, for example – “it wasn’t a TV gimmick” – the Top Gear test track was developed specifically to give credibility to the performance figures of new sports cars, simply by using the same independent track layout and, well, an independent Stig. The latter of whom, incidentally, has been keeping himself busy recently driving Michael Schumacher's old Bugatti EB10.

Over time, with several hundred celebrity “stars in a reasonably priced car” making their Top Gear debuts, and with the multiple leader boards becoming a bigger part of each new season (we all remember the Bugatti Veyron’s much-anticipated first lap, right…?), it was inevitable that “the track itself became another character in the TV show.” Also, fun fact, did you know that no power lap was ever done with a rolling start?

And what of the car? Unsurprisingly, as a long-time Porsche fan, Richard Hammond, who also gave the controversial new Ford Capri a go recently, is a big fan of the 992.2-generation 911 GT3, which first landed earlier this year in January (having debuted on the 996, the GT3 has been a 911 lynchpin since 1999). And, despite the name, changes to the ‘face-lifted’ GT3 are more technical than cosmetic.