Being a bit of a Le Mans nut, this was this seasons most anticipated show for me.
While I do agree what's been said earlier, that they really should have done this as a special & dedicated the whole episode to the Britcar segment, I can sort of understand why they didn't. Because if they did, most of the episode would have been about how rubbish the car was, how rubbish the drivers were and so on, and that would have been boring.
My fascination with endurance races as such, is that you get to see a whole lot of different cars battle it out, getting worn out, being fixed in record speed (I can still remember one of the Audi R8's getting a complete transmission change in 15 minutes a few years ago) and then at the end, you're down to hoping that whatever gaffer tape has been used to glue the car together will last to the end.
However, had Top Gear done that, I feel it would have either distracted too much from the challenge at hand (taking a second hand diesel through 24 hours of racing) or it would have taken too long. I would have love to see what happened to the Mosler, the car apparently on fire (right after Hammond's 'Don't wreck the car!'), the one that more or less went right into a wall and so on, but then they would probably have needed 24 hours to cover all of that :lol:
I have box-set somewhere with 2 hour recaps of the last couple of Le Mans races, and in just about each of them, I can remember one or two episodes that got left out.
As for the the episode as a whole:
The Fiat peice was kind of nice, though it was pretty apparent that large parts of it had been re-shot (all the stunts they did & so on). I would have preferred if they did it like the race in Lisbon, which off the top of my head was done in one take more or less (camera on the bike helmet, camera inside the car and off they went). And I sort of follow his point, in that it's too expensive for what it is. In my opinion, the only reason someone would buy that over a Panda, would be to show off (like the new Mini & new Beetle).
I skipped the SIARPC part since I had no idea who he was. I would have liked to see them bring in someone familiar with endurance racing, there's plenty to choose from (Darren Turner or Johnny Herbert from the Aston Martin teams, Allan McNish from Audi team & so on. Personally, I would have loved to see Tom Kristensen, but then, I'm biased
). Would have been a nice tie-in with the overall theme of the show.
I sort of skipped the Ascari part as well, as I wanted to get on with the Britcar bit, but you have to give them credit for hitting the top of the board. Now bring on the Veyron! 8)
The Britcar was indeed epic, it really gave me a lot of respect for people who take part in this stuff. Especially the nighttime driving must have been hell, with so little light to work with. And especially if you're like Hammond and have no clue about where you're going!
Shame about the fog in the morning, I would have loved to see May trying to keep up the pace in the 'Happy Hour' (The part of the day where there's still some heat in the track, but where the air is still relatively cool, allowing for maximum performance) :lol:
Overall, I'd say 8 / 10. The SIARPC did nothing for me & they were trying too hard with the stunts in the Fiat segment. But the rest was gold
small correction... i thought she didnt name it?, the kids she taught did, which makes the whole case even more unbelievable.
She asked the kids to come up with names and then they voted for it. The worst part was that it wasn't even intended to be named after a certain islamic prophet, but instead it was one of the children who suggested his own name. And that name won.
