Top Gear: Clarkson farewells in a Ferrari 488 and Mercedes AMG GT S

This airfield and hangar in Surrey were a perfect fit for Top Gear. It was sad to say good bye, albeit in a Ferrari.

Supplied Editorial Clarkson

It took a while for the BBC’s senior management to understand what I was on about. They’d just canned Top Gear and couldn’t really understand my plans to bring it back. Eventually, I managed to get a bit of face time in Jack Barclay’s Bentley showroom in Mayfair with Jane Root, the then controller of BBC2.

Over a glass of wine I said the show would have a studio, in a hangar, and that outside there’d be a test track, where all the corners would be named after soft rock bands. “It’ll be a place,” I said, “where car things happen.” And the penny dropped.

Andy Wilman, the producer, and I set out to find the “place” where these “car things” would “happen”, and ooh it was tricky. Britain is festooned with airfields and empty hangars, but everywhere we went it was the same story. “The RAF still needs it.” Or: “You’ll never get planning permission.” In the end, while I was looking at a potholed option somewhere in the north, Andy rang from a place called Dunsfold in Surrey ... and the rest is history.

It was an active airfield, but the perimeter road was in good nick and the owner said we could paint a few lines on the main runway to mark a track. To help us out with that, we called a Lotus test driver called Gavan Kershaw, who came down and worked out the corners that are now so familiar to millions of people.

We were especially pleased with Hammerhead which, for no reason at all, wasn’t named after a soft rock band. It was a quick left followed by an opening right and it would, said Gavan, cause a badly set up car to understeer. I loved the Hammerhead.

But then I loved all the corners. It’ll always hold a special place in my heart, that track. Which is why, last week, I was feeling a bit choked as I went through the gates for the very last time.

The Top Gear portable office was locked to stop me taking even a small souvenir. The hangar was empty. But the track was full of enough memories to keep me going. The missing lamp where Black Stig went off in an Aston Martin Vanquish. The tyre wall rendered cockeyed by the first White Stig’s Koenigsegg moment. And the two furrows left by me after a quarter-of-a-mile spin in a BMW 1 Series.

The longest accident made that look like a parking bump. One of our drivers — I shan’t name him — had been asked by a director to get a shot of a Lamborghini’s speedometer reading 200mph (320km/h). So off he went, in the pouring rain, to oblige. He finished more than 800m away, pointing backwards, metres from a school playground.

Then there were the celebrity moments. Lionel Richie was our first big-name American guest and we’d rented him what was described as a luxury motor home. What made it luxurious was that it had a picture on one of the walls. A picture, much to our friend’s distress, of the Twin Towers. And it got worse: while he was out on the track, trying to set a time in the reasonably priced car, a wheel fell off.

Then we had Michael Gambon nearly rolling while doing the last corner. And Tom Cruise, who did exactly the same thing. As I said. Many memories.

So I wanted to enjoy my last moment out there, which is why I was so very grateful to Ferrari for shipping a brand-new 488 over from Italy. I’d brought some guests. People who’d donated, between them, £100,000 to the Roundhouse charity in London to be there for my last hurrah. Or so I thought. In fact it turned out that what they’d really bid for was the chance to be driven round in Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason’s LaFerrari.

While we were waiting for a go in that, I took them round in the amuse-bouche, the 488, and ooh it was good. Had I been so inclined, I could probably have done my fastest-ever lap in the 488. But I wasn’t so inclined. I was there to have fun, to kick the tail out and burn some rubber. Which is why Mercedes had sent along an AMG GT S.

The Ferrari is a wonderful thing. But the Mercedes is more ... how can I put this? It’s more me. A big engine at the front, a gearbox at the back and a big smiley ape in the middle, shouting, “Power!” for no apparent reason every few seconds. The Ferrari is a quail’s egg dipped in the finest celery salt. The Merc is a big steak, dripping in blood and horseradish.

So I did a few laps in that, looking out of the side window at all the places where people had come off, and then it was time to choose. Which would I use for my final lap? The answer was obvious. It would have to be LaFerrari, Mason’s million-quid hybrid.

And so off I went for one last go in what most people would say is the greatest, most exciting car yet made. It’s up there, certainly. But I did look a bit quizzical when I first put my foot down hard, because while the acceleration was prodigious, it didn’t feel quite as savage as it had done in the McLaren P1. What does surprise you is the way you think it absolutely must be time for a gear change but the rev counter suggests the petro-Faraday motor is only just starting to gird its loins. On and on the power comes, in a never-ending stream of noise and thrust.

When the dashboard and steering wheel finally start to light up like the control room in a stricken nuclear power station and you pull on the right paddle to change up, you get your second surprise, because ooh it’s quick. And then you’re in the next gear, and on and on comes the power again. Then it’s time for the tricky second-to-last corner, the one that caught out the celebrities because you’re going from a wide runway that dulls you to the sense of speed to a tiny slip road where everything feels much faster. You need to brake hard in LaFerrari, and that’s OK because it slows down the way it changes gear: immediately.

Through the bends? Well, it was Nick’s car and it was my last-ever lap and I didn’t want to bin it, so perhaps I wasn’t pushing quite as hard as I should have been. But I dunno. While it felt sublime and planted and wondrous, I do seem to recall Porsche’s alternative, the 918, has just a tad more grip.

McLaren never wanted to see its P1 race the 918 around Dunsfold. It had done the maths and worked out that in those tight corners the Porsche’s four-wheel-drive system would give it the edge.

We will find out one day which of these three cars really is the fastest. But for now it was time for the last lap. And I made it a good one. A smooth one. The sort of lap that would have made the Stig proud.

And then it was over. And back in the car park everyone was packing up to go home. And there was one of the guests left, saying she hadn’t had a go. And the only car that hadn’t been loaded on to the trailer was the Mercedes. So I took her out in that.

And went nuts. My last lap, then. It was smoky. And I’m happy with that.