Jeremy Clarkson, James May, Richard Hammond: band is back together

I’ve reunited with my old Top Gear pals on a new show. It’s creative, silly and involves cars. What could go wrong?

McLaren P1, not the best-looking car in the world, but it has a sinister presence.

Last week I climbed behind the wheel of a McLaren P1, fired up its massive engine, eased it into Drive and set off in a blizzard of noise and wheel spin to start filming Amazon Prime’s new motoring show.

On one side of me was James May in a Ferrari. On the other was Richard Hammond in a Porsche. And in front, hanging from the back of a Land Rover Discovery, was the big, bushy beard of Ben the cameraman. The band was back together and I was very excited.

When BBC bigwig Alan Yentob called back in April to say my contract would not be renewed as a result of the “fracas”, I really didn’t know what I was going to do. A large part of me considered the appealing option of “nothing at all”. A smaller part thought I should change tack and do a program on farming.

I had no idea what James and Richard were planning. When we spoke, they made supportive noises, but unlike the US marines the three of us have always operated under the rule that we do leave a man behind. Put simply, they had themselves to look after and the BBC was making all sorts of coo-coo noises while dribbling warm honey into their heads.

Of course, you all now know that they decided to come with me to look for a new home. To find one, we decided to get an American agent, which meant doing conference calls with people who dressed up like the Borg and communicated by barking. “Woof, woof,” they all went into their face-mounted microphones. James May in particular looked very distressed.

Eventually, though, we found a chap who said the three of us and our executive producer, Andy Wilman, suddenly becoming available was a huge opportunity for any broadcaster. Or at least that’s what we thought he said — it came across as a series of dog sounds.

True to his word, soon the offers started pouring in. All of a sudden we were up to our scrotums in the dizzying world of modern narrowcasting, in which you can upload a program when it’s ready, not necessarily at 7pm on a Tuesday.

And you can say what you want. There’s no finger-wagging. Kevin Spacey spat on Jesus and no one batted an eyelid. Because the internet, let’s face it, is also showing a gentleman and a lady making sweet love in extreme detail.

The problem standing between us and all this freedom was an impenetrable layer of legal gobbledygook. May gave up and disappeared. I wanted to do the same.

And then, riding over the horizon on a white charger, in a brown cardboard envelope, came Amazon. It took us to its London headquarters and showed us the tech it had lined up for the very near future, made us an offer in English — well, it was in American, actually, but that’s close enough — and that was that. All we needed to do was come up with a new show, as all of the previous show’s ingredients belonged to the BBC.

It forced us to get creative. To do what we’d never dared to do in the past: to change what we knew worked. We have, though. It’s going to be all new. New name. New segments. New ideas. Everything is different. Apart from James May, obviously, who is still in 1953. And Richard Hammond, who still doesn’t quite understand anything. And me, who thinks everything can be solved with a hammer.

Oh, and we will still be testing cars.

Which is why, last week, I arrived in a part of Portugal that smells faintly of sewage and is full of people I meet at drinks parties in Oxfordshire and friends of Prince Andrew enjoying the last of the summer sunshine. Why Portugal? Well, it’s home to the brilliant Algarve racetrack, which we all agreed would be ideal to sort out the question that has vexed motoring enthusiasts for nearly a year: which is best, the Ferrari, the Porsche 918 or the McLaren P1?

I’m here now, and I’ve spent a day in the McLaren and I still can’t quite believe the thing’s for real. I’ll admit the Ferrari is extremely pretty and that the Porsche grips like an especially clingy and nervous barnacle, but for sheer “Oh my god”, sweaty-pawed, heart-racing, wide-eyed, hair-on-end, ball-shrinking terror, you simply can’t beat the P1.

It doesn’t accelerate in the conventional sense. The throttle pedal is more a sort of portal to a wormhole. You press it and instantly 674kW of electricity and petrol working together puts you somewhere else.

It’s not the best-looking car in the world but it has a sinister presence. Like the foldaway stock on an AK-47, it’s functional, and its function is to terrify.

But the looks and the speed are nothing compared with its noise. Because it’s a hybrid, you have the whirr of a milk float, the chirps of the wastegates, the bellow of the V8 and the roar of the exhaust, all of which come together to make the sort of sound you would normally associate only with a dramatic and sudden movement of tectonic plates.

Inside, there are dials and readouts and buttons that make it go even faster. But you have no time for any of this because you are going so bloody fast.

I have no idea at this stage whether it will be faster than the Ferrari or the Porsche round the racetrack. That test doesn’t happen until later.

But whatever the outcome, we are now in the future. It certainly feels that way from where I’ve been sitting all day.

McLaren P1: Hybrid hypercar

Engine: 3.8-litre turbocharged V8 plus electric motor

Combined outputs: 674kW and 900Nm

Transmission: Seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, rear-wheel drive

Price: £866,000 ($1.8m, N/A Australia)

Rating: 4 out of 5

Verdict: Just like that, you’re in the Orion nebula