- Hello. - Hello, everybody.
Greetings. Hello.
Hello.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you so much,
and welcome to The Grand Tour,
which this week comes to you
from the United Arab Emirates!
Specifically...
Specifically, we are in Dubai,
which means, for the first time ever,
we are the three poorest people in the tent.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
I mean, look at that.
You think, "How do they do that
with all those fountains?"
Well, I'll let you into a little secret.
It's Perrier water.
Flinging it up into the air.
I heard another one the other day.
A taxi driver clearing out his cab
after a hard day at work...
umbrella, mobile phone, usual stuff...
£800,000 gold bar.
Someone had left it in there
- and not even noticed. - You would.
Mind you, that said, here,
you can just go to an ATM and get gold out.
Look at this! That's an actual ATM.
You know, at two o'clock in the morning,
"I haven't got an ingot with me."
But here you're fine.
You can even buy tyres here, OK?
Which are studded with gold and diamonds.
Look at this. £600,000 a set.
Even the authorities are loaded.
We have here a selection of pictures of local police cars.
They have an Aventador.
They also have an SLS.
Yeah. Wait for it. They even have a Veyron police car.
Oh, yeah. Obviously,
- because you need that. - You actually do.
You need that. It's important.
I've even got a photograph of a local ambulance.
- Look, here it is. - It's a Lotus!
Not quite sure how that works.
Presumably you have to break the patient's other leg
to actually get him in there.
- Yeah. - Then there's public transport.
Now, OK, in the UK, this is a bus, yes?
- Yeah. - Let me show you
a photograph of a local bus here.
- There you go. - Wow!
155mph.
Costs £7 million. Seats 23 people.
You telephone the owner. He comes and picks you up
and takes you to where you want to go.
Well, that's a taxi.
- No, James. No, no, no. - Isn't it?
A taxi in Dubai looks like this.
Oh, right. Yeah, of course.
You think I'm joking? Look, "Uber".
Seriously, you call Uber up here,
and you're given a choice... Prius or helicopter.
Wow! Do you get to rate the driver?
Do you think he sticks his telephone on the screen
like in Britain in the Prius?
"I'm not really a pilot.
I'm doing this while training to be a plumber."
"I want to get out!" Just get out.
- Shall we get on with the show? - Good idea.
Because in our car show this week...
James falls over.
Ow!
James fall over again.
And James falls over.
But first, there's been a bit of an argument.
You see, James and I both recently bought
five-door German hatchbacks.
His is a BMW i3, which is powered by electricity,
and mine is a conventional Volkswagen Golf GTI.
Yes, meaning my car is from the future
and his is from the past,
making me enlightened and him a dinosaur.
They have been arguing like this for a while now.
The thing is, I don't doubt
that in the future electric cars will work,
but they don't work now.
- Well, they do. - They don't, James!
Well, why did you fit yours
with a petrol-powered range extender?
Well, that's just a little generator
that keeps the battery topped up if I need it.
What you're saying is you can't rely on new technology.
And your seats, they're made
from the contents of a Hoover bag.
Oh, says the man...
Says the man whose seats are made
from Jackie Stewart's old trousers,
which they are.
- It's... - Whatever!
The fact is, in the office,
we decided we'd had enough of them bickering
and told them to go out and do a proper road test.
So we did.
We began in London
with a real-world test
that Clarkson had thought of.
Right, James, we must now see
who can open their back door in the shortest time.
- Why? - There could be an emergency.
People will want to know.
Ready, steady, go! Oh, mine's open.
Oh, dear.
Have you got to open your front door
before you open that... let's be honest... a flap?
- It's not a flap. - It is a flap.
Are BMW saying that, in the future,
children will only be three inches wide?
What are you talking about?
For a start, it's hardly a hardship,
and that's an enormous space.
You only wanted to do that test
because you made a mistake. He made a mistake.
I didn't. What mistake?
You did. You wanted a three-door Golf,
and you didn't fill the form in properly.
I know that. You can't tick boxes.
Five doors are better-looking.
No, they're not.
Nobody ever wanted a five-door Golf GTI.
- It's really naff. - We've got to get on and talk about money.
He also wanted a red one.
He didn't fill that bit in properly, either.
This car, with many, many optional extras,
was £36,000.
Whereas James May's BMW i3 was...
Well... let's find out, shall we?
How much was your i3?
Well, it was £40,000,
but I got £5,000 back from the government,
so actually it's £35,000,
which is less than yours, I think.
You were given, by the government,
£5,000 of taxpayers' money
so you could buy that car?
I didn't make the rules. You can't turn it down.
It's not like the Beatles' OBE.
That is obscene!
I mean, James May is a wealthy man,
but that bus driver has bought his car for him.
Where's the justice in that?
You're paying for his car. Do you know that?
You have paid for it.
Just so you know, you've paid for his car.
Has James May thanked you for buying his car for him?
Jeremy will have an opinion on this,
despite having bought a farm on which, for many years,
he was paid to not grow anything.
Congestion charge here.
It's £11.50 to drive into the centre.
- Not for me, it isn't. - Of course it isn't.
The taxi driver, is he paying for your congestion charge?
I suppose everybody must pay a little bit.
♫ James May, James May Stealing from the rich ♫
♫ James May, James May Stealing from the poor ♫
♫ He steals from the rich He steals from the poor ♫
♫ And once more, wants it all ♫
♫ That's appalling ♫
It nearly works.
I'd had enough of this,
so I came up with a new way of trying to prove
my car was better than his.
James, can I just ask, why have you brought me to London Airport?
Because I want to prove that my car is faster than yours.
That's funny, because I just heard you say
that your car's faster than mine.
Yeah. Yeah, it is.
- 167 horsepower. - Mm-hm.
Mine has the performance pack, so it produces 227.
- Does it? - Yes.
That's the official figure, is it?
Yes, it is.
- From VW? - Yes.
- And you believe them? - Yes.
All right, listen, I know what you mean.
0-150.
No.
Having not agreed on that,
we then failed to agree
on where the finishing line should be.
James wanted a short race...
and I didn't.
- Compromise. - It isn't. That's too short.
- It's not. It's exactly right. - It is.
But eventually, we were ready to go.
Now, the thing to remember, viewers,
is that an electric motor
delivers enormous torque from nothing,
from really low down.
So over a short distance,
I should absolutely cream this.
Here we go.
DCC... normal.
Steering... normal.
Drive... Eco.
No point in ruining my own car to win this.
No need to rush.
I'm winning. Oh, yes!
I'm still winning.
Let's go get him. Come on, Golfy!
No. No!
Quite sprightly, but er...
not sprightly enough, methinks.
See you, James.
Bah! I've made the future look rubbish
on the television.
And then, to make it look even worse,
I told the benefit scrounger
that we were setting off for Devon.
Erm... Why are we going to Devon?
Because we have two tickets tonight
to see Roger Daltrey out of the Who
perform at a pub on Dartmoor.
Couldn't we just wait for him
to come and maybe perform in London?
- Because I'm sure he will. - Well, no.
Because it's a 200-mile drive, or thereabouts,
it'll give us an opportunity
to see how our cars work in the real world.
What he means is it's an opportunity for him to claim
that the car of the past is superior.
To prove it wasn't, I needed to top up
the charge I'd lost by doing the drag race.
Right, if I look at settings on my satnav,
I can look at where all the charging and petrol stations are.
I can even tell what sort of charging point
I am being offered,
whether or not I have the right card for it.
And soon, we found exactly what I was looking for.
- It's the future. - Another one.
- Oh, that's such a shame. - Oh, shut up!
Because I didn't have enough juice in the batteries
to make the next charge point,
I had to turn on my petrol generator,
which stopped them going even flatter,
and engaged ECO PRO+ driving mode.
It does mean I have to do 56mph.
That's where ECO PRO+ sets the maximum speed,
because that way you get the maximum range.
But it means I'm effectively a lorry driver.
Because I'm in ECO PRO, I don't get any air-conditioning
or climate control at all,
because that wastes electricity,
so the car is slowly steaming up.
It's now warning me. It says,
"Find a charge station, you idiot!"
How many screws do you have to have loose before you say
"Yes, I'm gonna buy a car,
which, when it's running low on power,
has to be driven at 8mph,
with the air conditioning off, and the lights off,
and the heater off, and the radio off.
Why would you do that?
After several lifetimes
of driving in convoy with James,
we finally found
a charge point that worked.
That's it.
- It's done? - Yes.
You don't have to stand and watch it.
It's not like petrol. We can go off
and have a cup of coffee, a sticky bun.
- How long is it gonna take? - An hour or so.
- An hour? - Yeah.
How much does it cost... to fill it up?
Nothing.
- What? - It's free.
- How could it be free? - It's free.
You have to get the card, but it doesn't cost...
- How much does the card cost? - Nothing.
You fill a form in on the Internet,
and it comes in the post.
So I'm paying for your fuel...
well, your electricity... as well?
Probably.
I'm just staggered by this.
This is iniquitous.
After killing time for a few minutes...
I'm just gonna try and win some money
to pay for James May's heating bill this year,
which... will undoubtedly be down to me.
I decided I couldn't be bothered to wait any more,
so I recharged the old-fashioned way
and, in moments, was back on the road.
Britain only produces
5% more power than it actually consumes.
That's now. So if everybody starts buying electric cars,
the power stations won't be able to cope.
There'll be power cuts,
and then there will be looting and anarchy.
That's what James is doing.
He is bringing Britain to its knees.
Oh.
Yes.
Here's something for Jeremy.
Assuming he's got a CD player.
He's probably got a cassette player
in his Golf GTI.
Actually,
May couldn't have been more wrong.
This car may be from the past, but check this out.
It's accelerating now, you can probably hear that,
but I'm not doing it.
The radar in front of me
is maintaining a safe distance
behind the car in front.
He goes faster, I go faster.
He slows down, I slow down.
Car pulling out now into the middle lane.
The car will sense that.
Yeah. It's now dropping me
back from that.
I don't even have to steer,
because it'll keep itself between the white lines.
Look.
Google is making a big fuss.
"Ooh, aren't we clever?
We're making a self-driving car."
It's already here! I'm driving it.
And it's from 1978.
After an hour's charging,
I was back on the move.
I actually think the service station on the motorway
should have an electric-car driver section,
where there are, you know,
very complicated jigsaw puzzles and a Monopoly set,
or maybe some painting-by-numbers.
It is 170 miles to go.
God, look at it. It's all the way down there.
Many miles ahead,
I was busy firing up
the GTI's Apple CarPlay system.
Right, I'm gonna send James May a text message now,
which would be illegal in most cars,
but not in this one.
To whom should I send your message?
May.
What was that again? Uh-oh, something's wrong.
Can you try again?
Edit that out.
To whom shall I send it?
May.
I don't know what you mean by "Barry".
- To whom shall I send it? - I didn't say "Barry".
May.
This is not doing well, Volkswagen. Come on.
OK. What do you want to say to May?
"May, you're a blithering idiot,
and your stupid car is ruining my day."
Your message to May says,
"Your brother is idiot and your stupid car is ready."
Ready to send it?
"Your brother is idiot"?
What? He's never met my brother.
How does he know he's an idiot?
Because I'd turned off the motorway
to take the more direct route to Dartmoor,
I thought I'd better let James know that as well.
Erm... I'm going on the A34 and the A303.
I'll see you there.
Your message to May says,
"I'm going on the first floor of the three RC."
Ready to send it?
I, meanwhile, was using the longer motorway route
because there'd be more charging points.
But I had my foot down.
And now... the electric car of the future
is overtaking a Porsche 911 Turbo S.
There we go.
I'm driving along in a car on the motorway
at motorway speeds,
overtaking everybody.
Oh, no. Since I filled up,
I've used... an eighth of a tank.
Oh, no!
And soon I was deep in the Devon countryside,
where my excellent motorway cruising machine
had become a GTI.
We're in full sport mode now.
It's got an astonishing front differential,
so you can hurl the car into any corner
at any speed that takes your fancy,
knowing you're gonna come out on the other side OK.
I'm not kidding. On a road like this
with wet leaves and mud everywhere,
this car is as fast as any Ferrari.
It just is.
Many hours from now,
James May's going to be coming along here saying,
"Right, I've got 13% battery and 2% fuel,
so if I do 13.8 miles to the gallon, I should..."
Who wants to do maths
when they could do lift-off oversteer?
In the i3, thanks to my exuberant driving,
I was indeed having to do some maths.
Energy management update:
I have 36 miles of electric power remaining,
if I'm driving like this,
and 34 miles of petrol range left.
So I'm going to stop at these services
and I'm going to fill up the little fuel tank.
Nine quid. That is absolutely...
I've overfilled it, in fact.
If you drive a GTI,
you're going to get to where you're going more quickly,
which means you're going to meet more people,
have more experiences, learn more stuff.
Speed makes you cleverer.
Whereas, if you drive a BMW i3,
you're gonna get everywhere late.
You're gonna miss out on things.
You'll miss out on Theatre, culture, poetry.
Love.
You'll be a hollowed-out husk of a man.
"Connect your vehicle and validate."
What do they mean, "validate"? I've already validated.
And here we are. My quest is at an end.
I'm in good time. All is well.
And I was in for a treat,
because joining Roger Daltrey on stage
was legendary guitarist Wilko Johnson.
The fabulous Wilko Johnson!
"Station waiting for a charge request from the vehicle.
Initialisation. Charging."
It's not charging.
♫ Well, wait a minute, baby ♫
♫ Well, whatcha gonna do? ♫
OK, viewers, here is where we're at.
That last charging station wasn't working.
We have about 60 miles to go.
So the answer is...
Eco driving.
♫ Then I float on Down the street ♫
♫ Smiling at the faces
♫ That I meet ♫
I'm not switching it into fast mode.
It's too wasteful.
♫ Then I'm going back home ♫
It is 18 miles to the pub.
I have 16 miles of electric left.
Is there anything else I can turn off?
Finally, after much range anxiety...
Roger Daltrey, here I come!
I made it.
Thanks for coming, and good night!
Oh, cock!
So... Hang on.
- Your car of the future... - Yes?
Two of the charging points
you went to on that simple journey, two were broken?
Yes, that is very unusual. But the point is,
if I'd been allowed to set off
with a full electric charge and a full little fuel tank,
I could have got there... admittedly a lot at 56mph...
but I would have done it with one stop.
56mph. The future does sound boring, James.
And you still would have missed the gig.
That film is out of date.
You don't get £5,000 from the government any more.
- You only get £4,500. - How will people cope?
I think what we've done there is prove
his car is not really worth buying just yet.
- Don't argue. It isn't. It's not quite finished. - Don't start again.
Before we move on, I want to tell you a little bit more
about that Volkswagen system of texting.
Cos I was using that to send a text from my car
the other day to my youngest daughter,
and I put four kisses at the end, which is normal.
And I said "X-X-X-X", OK? This is what she got.
Oh, no!
Oh, that is awkward!
Oh!
What did she say?
- Oh, that is awkward. - Say it, "X-X-X-X".
That's what comes out.
What sort of face did she pull
when she got that from her dad?
Vomitous. Vomitous.
We haven't spoken since.
Katya, I'm sorry. It was the car!
- Move on! - Yes, let's move on.
It is now time for us to visit the headquarters of Chat & Co,
who are, of course, based on Conversation Street.
Best one yet. Anyway, we begin...
We begin with Dubai, in fact.
Cos the first time I came here, which was...
was only 20 years ago, it was like a small village.
I was the tallest thing in it.
Were you?
Now look at it. It's unbelievable!
- It's not that now, is it? - It is unbelievable, that.
Do you know, this shirt is older
than everything you can see out of that window.
James, that shirt is older than Carthage, mate. Look at it.
It is getting on a bit.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is,
a few years ago, when I first came here,
there were virtually no motoring laws at all.
I woke up one morning in my hotel...
the hotel, there was only one...
in the hotel, thinking,
"How did I get back here last night?"
Looked out of the window, two wheel marks
right over the ornamental roundabout.
And in the flowerbed, my Range Rover.
Jeremy, were you very tired when you parked it?
- I was off my face with tiredness. - OK. OK.
- OK. - Barely able to concentrate.
But it was an extraordinary free-for-all,
which I bet it isn't now.
It really isn't now.
There are now very many rules
and many stiff punishments. I've got some of them here.
Getting behind on the repayments on your car loan,
you go to prison.
Making rude gestures at other motorists, you go to prison.
They're all just the things I did
when I was 17 every day.
I quite approve of that.
I'm just thinking of all the things
that you could be sent to prison for in Britain
if we ran it properly.
A very good conversation, isn't it? Here's one.
Anyone who takes more than five seconds
between getting in their car after filling up with petrol
and driving off.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Definitely.
Do you know what I mean by...
- Definitely. - What do they do?
- I know. - What?
Restaurant owners who serve food
on a piece of wood.
Erm, It's not very car-related,
- is it, really? - No, it's not, but...
Heston Blumenthal does that.
Yes, he does. Exactly.
Heston, if you're watching... prison.
You, prison.
I hate that... food on a piece of wood.
I tell you what I hate.
I may have mentioned this a couple of times before.
And I think it should be imprisonable.
Any pilot who allows the cabin of the plane
to be more than 68°F.
- Oh, God. Here we go. - I'm with you on that.
- All planes are too hot these days. - They are.
It's just a standard moan of yours.
- I know. I know. - Oh, God.
We do have to fly together, but I make every effort
not to sit near Jeremy Clarkson for a long flight.
But eventually, you know,
they turn the lights off and it goes all dark,
and after ten minutes this voice over in the blackness goes,
"It's literally the hottest place in the world!"
- It is. - "Are we flying into the sun?
If it gets any hotter, I shall open a window!"
I've heard all of this so many times.
Honestly, why do they do it?
Why? Are there any pilots here?
- Yeah. - You are a pilot?
Why do you do it?
Why do you boil us all? Who do you fly with?
- Etihad. - Etihad.
- How hot are the planes? - Very warm.
Well, there's a new rule.
I'm telling you. I'm warning you.
I'm seriously warning you on this one.
You land. If it's gone over 68 in the cabin,
straight to prison for 50 years.
Can I also say, since you're in here...
- We've gone off topic. - It's worth pointing this out.
Since you're in here, when we're trying to sleep,
don't tell us the outside temperature
is 57 below zero,
cos we don't give a toss.
Cos you can't open the window anyway.
We care about the temperature in the plane.
Just a few rules.
Anyway, let's move it on.
Shall we get back on to some cars?
Yeah, travel...
Well, sort of travel-related stuff. OK.
I've got a photograph here
of Britain's idea
of infrastructure investment, OK?
This is in Cambridge. It's erm...
It's a T-junction that they've designed,
for reasons known only to themselves,
to look like a roundabout.
Yeah, and let me guess.
It cost 100 grand to do it?
No, it was £500,000.
- Of course it was, yeah. - Half a million pounds
they charged the taxpayer for that.
- For some paving slabs. - Exactly.
Anyway, Dubai's idea of infrastructure investment
is a little bit different,
cos what they're planning is this.
It's called the Hyper Loop.
It's like a tube train.
And it'll go from Dubai to Abu Dhabi,
which is about 100 miles away,
- in 12 minutes. - 12 minutes!
12 minutes. That's how long that will take.
So how fast does it go?
500 miles an hour.
I mean, that is just breath-taking. It really is.
- Did you say it was 100 miles? - Yeah.
It's going 100 miles at 500mph in 12 minutes.
That means it accelerates to 500mph instantly.
- Mm. - You're gonna have trouble
holding on to the drinks trolley in that.
Ah! Ah!
When it sets off, you'll poo yourself.
Then, when it stops,
you'll wee yourself at the end.
It's a... Are there any doctors here?
I'm just saying. It's not a medical argument.
- I'm just saying. - I'm not sure you're right.
Well, think about Newton.
If you set off, you'll poo yourself, yes,
but when it slows down, you'll un-poo yourself,
because everything has an equal and opposite reaction.
I'm roughly right, aren't I? Any physicists here?
- I think we should move on. - Yeah.
Right at the beginning of the series,
Richard Hammond and I came up
with a rather brilliant idea called...
Making James May
Do Things He Doesn't Want To Do.
Yep. A brilliant idea for an occasional feature.
We made him go to a doughnuting festival in South Africa.
- Yeah. - He hated it.
Then he thought we'd forgotten about it.
But we hadn't.
This is the sort of countryside
where people can do nice things,
like go for a walk or a picnic.
This, however, is the sort of countryside
that will be my home for the day... mud.
Yes, I love mud.
When I say I love mud, I mean I hate mud.
But the people with me here today really do love it.
They dream of the stuff.
These people behind me are called winchers,
and what they like doing is winching.
They will drive, deliberately,
into something like that puddle over there...
..until they get stuck, and then winch themselves out.
When they've done that, they'll find another one...
and do it again, and again,
and again, and again, all day long.
Winchers seem to be obsessed
with making life as difficult as possible.
They put orienteering punches
in almost unreachable locations...
and then try to get their 4x4s right up to them,
as Seamus Doyle, my winch buddy for the day, explained.
There are 50 punches
dotted around in different parts of the site.
We have a punch card on the side of the vehicle.
You've got to get this punchcard to the punch.
The punch will be on a string
maybe 2ft long from the tree, or maybe 1ft.
So you've got to punch the number.
- Like a hole puncher? - Yes.
When you get stuck,
because you're gonna get stuck...
- Yes. Yeah, yeah. - I have to get out
and attach the winch to a tree?
Yes, you'll get out,
and you'll get your strap with you.
The strap goes round the tree to protect the tree.
Then you bring your wincher up to the tree,
or whatever obstacle we attach it to,
and I'll operate the buttons.
- Your English is excellent. - Thank you.
I've been practising for a long time now.
A lot of practice has gone into that.
As soon as the contest began,
Seamus made it plain that my new role in life
was to be his winch bitch.
OK, got to go, go, go.
- What, I've got to get out? - Yeah.
Where the hell do you think I'm gonna go?
Go with the winch rope to that tree over there.
Oh, man!
This is like being a...
hippopotamus.
OK, the clock is ticking.
Having got our first punch,
I was hoping the day might get a bit less terrible.
But it didn't.
- Oh, man! - James, come on, will you?
Ow!
I'm winching myself.
Oh, that's much better.
Well, I say it's "much better",
it's less shit.
Go! We've got to make up time.
- I've got a great idea. - Yes?
- Why don't you get out and get the punch? - No.
Why do I have to keep doing it?
Me being the driver, it doesn't work that way.
Right, where next on our lovely Sunday drive?
- We're going down here. - Don't be stupid.
Ow!
We're stuck again.
Get the winch out here, buddy.
See the tree over there?
The place is full of trees.
This is terrible.
Christ!
On the odd occasion when I did manage
a sit-down in the car,
Seamus even managed to ruin that.
That wasn't even necessary.
You just did that to piss me off.
No, no, no.
We nearly made it, James.
Yeah, but you didn't. Now can I go home?
Ground anchor over the hill.
- You just sit there, OK? - I'll be here, OK, yeah.
It's four hours we've been in here now,
and we've travelled, in reality...
150 metres.
All the things I could be doing today
that I would rather do,
which include self-harm.
Mercifully, the contest eventually came to an end,
and we were finally on our way back to prize-giving.
- The good news is we're not gonna come last. - How do you know?
Because one of the boys broke down since ten o'clock.
Lucky bastard.
Oh, geez!
I'm on it. I'm on it.
No, you're gonna overdo it!
No, it's OK. You're OK.
- You idiot! - Your fault!
It was you driving, you fool!
It stinks down here.
God! What is this stuff?
England.
At last, we made it back for the prize-giving.
So, here's a quick sum-up.
Er... At the end of a seven-hour day,
I've... been stuck 50-something times.
Erm... I've fallen over,
I haven't actually been counting, something like 25 times.
I've nearly drowned in three puddles.
And that wouldn't be so bad
if I was gonna win a winch or a winch cover
or a new piece of rope or something like that,
but, in fact, in the rollover,
we tore the punchcard off, which means, technically,
we've got to start again from the beginning.
But I've decided to go and drown myself instead.
- I like Seamus a lot. - Yeah, I like him.
- Seamus is my new best friend. - Yeah, definitely.
- Ruined James May. - We need to do a lot more of those.
- Yeah, a lot more. A lot more. - Many more.
So, James, was there any aspect of that that you liked?
- No. - Good.
So, moving on, it's time now
to play Celebrity Brain Crash.
- That doesn't get any better. - It doesn't!
Anyway, our guest today
is a shining star from the world of Formula One.
He's also a very brave young man,
because, even though he is fully aware
of all of the calamities
that have befallen all the other celebrities
that have tried to come to our tent,
he's elected to arrive in a hovercraft.
Ladies and gentlemen, Daniel Ricciardo!
- And there he is. - There he is.
Putting his helmet on.
That's a wise move, I think. A wise move.
I genuinely, genuinely like Daniel Ricciardo,
because he is a truly nice man.
He's a truly nice man,
and he's also extremely happy and cheerful.
I just... Well, I know from personal experience,
hovercrafts are tricky to control.
Yeah, Jeremy, he's a Formula One driver.
- He's got this covered. - No, but it's windy.
Oh, here he comes. Here he is, arriving now.
- He's fine with that. - Wrestling with the controls and doing well.
- Yeah. - Oh, he's overshot.
He's overshot a bit there. Oh, dear.
Oh, no!
Oh, there's been... No, there's been a... No.
Oh, God! He's going in the fan! He's going in the fan!
Oh, no!
Oh, that...
The helmet...
The helmet has now thankfully jammed the motor with his head.
Yeah, it's too late.
Erm...
- Does that mean he's not coming on, then?
Well, James, he's been liquidised and now he's all over the window,
so, no, he's not.
Yeah, he's not in the tent so much as on it.
Yeah. Uh...
- What do we do next? - We've got to do something.
Well, I'm gonna clean that off, if you don't mind.
It is distracting and off-putting.
How do we fill the time?
It's all right, because I thought
something like this might happen.
So when we arrived last night,
I went out and I made a little film.
Thank God for that. What was it?
- Well, let's just... - We'll cover this up.
I'd like to talk to you now...
- No, we need to tighten the shot. - Good idea.
Tighten it on him. Just our faces.
Concentrate on me and what I'm saying,
and not on anything else
that you might be tempted to look at.
Erm... Now, the Porsche 918,
earlier in this series of programmes we saw it in action
and proved that it is the ultimate
of the hypercar Holy Trinity
when we put it against the Ferrari and the McLaren.
But I've always wondered,
"How would it fare in a straight race
against a Bugatti Veyron?"
And as we are in the home of the hypercar,
this is the place to find out.
Yeah. Now, tight on me. Are we tight? Good. Erm...
This is, then...
This is a... It's a race
between the future and the past.
Second time this evening.
Yeah, much like your film,
only this one is exciting.
So, here we are.
The grand old man of performance
coming out one more time to defend his title
against one of the young upstarts.
Here's how it all pans out on paper.
0-60, 2.5 seconds.
Power-to-weight ratio:
523 brake horsepower per tonne.
0-60, 2.6 seconds,
but a power-to-weight ratio
of 535 brake horsepower per tonne.
However, as we learned when we raced the 918
against the LaFerrari and the P1 in our first show,
hard facts like that count for nothing.
In the end, it's all down to this.
And I'm ready to race.
Actually...
Yeah.
Last bit of dead skin.
- OK. - Race mode.
Representing the future here.
I think... if I can just stay ahead...
This is going to be so close!
The future is gonna take it!
So sorry, Veyron, but your crown is gone.
Wow!
What a device this is.
I was gonna call it a day at that, obviously,
but there's a bloke here wants to race his Nissan.
It's a bit embarrassing, really,
but you don't want to upset the locals.
So, OK, race is on. Here we go.
Let's get this over with.
Do race, apologise, move on.
What?
He's pulling away in a Nissan Patrol!
What... just... happened?
So, hang on a minute.
At the beginning of this series,
we bigged up the hypercar Holy Trinity
as the three greatest cars
ever to have been conceived and invented.
- Yeah. - And the fastest of all of them...
- Yes. - was beaten by a Datsun van.
Yes. Yes.
What the hell engine did it have?
Well, it turns out it's got 1,900 horsepower.
- What were Porsche thinking of? - I know.
Back to the drawing boards, lads,
- and we'll gloss over that. - Exactly right.
Your embarrassing mistake, Porsche.
Now, I'd like to make a confession, actually, and it's this.
- I've never been able to drift properly.
It's just... I know, just ignore him.
Nothing to see. Nothing to see.
Nothing to see here.
It's just a man doing his job.
I've never been able to drift properly.
I can provoke a car, you know, into a slide,
but I couldn't hold it there.
It would always just spin off and crash.
No, exactly. I mean,
everything you've ever seen in the past of him drifting
has been done with smoke, mirrors, clever editing
and, let's be honest, stunt drivers.
So I decided when we started making Grand Tour
that I had to go out and change that,
and learn how to do it properly.
One option would be to go
to a supermarket car park on a Saturday night,
but instead I came here to France.
Specifically, to the top-secret
Ladoux test centre,
where Michelin develops its tyres.
There are several reasons why I'm here.
First, they have the space.
Twenty-seven miles of test tracks and skid pans.
Second, if you want to understand drifting,
you have to understand tyres,
and this place is a Tyre temple.
Third, and most important,
if you want to know about tyres,
you have to know how to drift,
and that is where this chap comes in.
His name is Jérôme Haslin,
and he is Michelin's chief Tyre tester
for BMW, Porsche, Ferrari and Bugatti.
Rubber compound runs through his veins.
He is a Zen master of grip,
a Kung Fu Panda of drifting,
and I am to be his new pupil.
This is what he means by "over the limit".
He uses power to kick the back of the car out of line...
and then a delicate balance of throttle and steering
to keep it there.
Your steering-wheel technique is amazing.
I play a lot with the gas pedal.
And if you work a lot with the gas,
you have nothing to do with the steering.
You can do all with one hand, like this.
- So you're steering the car with your right foot? - Yes.
Jérôme, this is brilliant that I learn how to do this
because you read those lists on the Internet
of things that women appreciate in a man, don't you?
And there's always honesty, integrity,
loyalty, fidelity, drifting.
It's always there.
On that note, it was time for me to begin my lesson.
You can pull up the seat more.
- More what? - More close to the steering wheel.
What are you trying to say?
OK. So, here we go.
Provoking oversteer, coming off, and then feeding...
No, and then going round in a small circle.
My challenge was to drift the car for one complete lap.
Gas, oversteer.
- Release gas, counter-steer. - Release gas, counter-steer.
- Oh, I've spun! - OK.
Gas, gas, gas, gas!
Oh, bugger!
Soon, the constant spinning
started to have an effect on my teacher.
A little bit more power. No.
Yeah, off the gas.
This is weird. I thought this would be so easy.
- OK, is it possible to take air? Fresh air? - Yeah.
Because I will be ill in two minutes.
Is this going badly?
While Jérôme went off to say hello to his breakfast...
I continued plugging away.
Begin power and begin counter-steer immediately.
Now hold it.
And soon, it started to click.
What I am doing is drifting. There's no denying that.
Oh, yes! Yes!
I've connected the steering wheel to my feet.
This is a whole new feeling.
This is not reacting to a slide,
this is deliberately provoking it
and keeping it right on the point.
Ha-ha, Jérôme, you French...
drift-and-ski-instructing dude, you.
He'll be impressed with this.
And he was,
so we immediately progressed
to the next level.
Just before we start, Jérôme,
are you going to make this look really annoyingly easy?
Yeah, you are. OK.
He did.
This is called transitioning...
drifting the car one way and then the other.
Get it right and it's almost balletic.
That is beautiful.
From that to that, seamlessly.
Which, sadly, couldn't be said of what followed.
Brake!
Brake, brake, brake.
Oh, bollocks.
Does BMW know we're using their car?
- I don't think so. - OK.
Eventually, though...
Yeah!
Yes, that was a transition.
Your first.
By the end of the day, I really had got it mastered.
I'd become, for the first time,
a driving god.
It really is...
It really is the most amazing feeling
when you get just the right amount of power
to spin the back wheels,
but not so much that you don't spin the whole car,
and you hold it on the edge.
No, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. He came back from France,
where he'd spent one day
saying, "Well, I'm brilliant now."
Yeah, well, I am.
Well, now, I'm sorry.
Hammond, it took me ten years
to learn how to drift a car.
- Mm-hm. Mm-hm. - Ten...
But because I'm not an ape,
I did it in one day.
- You didn't! - Well, I did.
Look, anyway, it doesn't matter.
To find out if he was a driving god,
Clarkson and I arranged for Richard Hammond
to take part in a drifting contest.
Yeah, we did. We fixed up the car for him.
We fixed up the competitors.
We did everything.
This is the car.
It started out as a Nissan 200SX,
but it's been fitted with a 700-horsepower 6.2L V8
and a modified steering rack,
so it can do this.
Its owner, a chap called Steve "Baggsy" Biagioni,
said that, to prepare for my competition,
I needed to put some melons on a row of traffic cones.
What are we doing with these?
Can I put mine down? They're really heavy.
Well, in a drifting competition,
you have what's called clipping points.
- Yes. - So these would be
determined points on the track
made by the judges as to where they want to see the car.
- Our clipping points are melons? - Melons, yes.
My orders were to get
as close to the melons as possible
without hitting them.
We're just gonna concentrate
on looking for the middle of the track, yeah,
and aim the back of the car near them melons.
OK.
Right, when you're ready, go for it.
Bollocks!
Having not really mastered this at all...
Oh, shit!
It was time for the event
organised by Clarkson and May to begin.
What they've done is told me to report here,
Rockingham Raceway,
where they've arranged for me
to take on two drifters
in some competitive drifting.
The course was a series of classic transitional bends...
strategically peppered
with the dreaded clipping points.
Baggsy was on hand to explain how the scoring worked.
The main thing about drifting is that it's a judged sport,
and the judges have placed the clipping points where they want to see the car.
So that'll either be the rear or the front of the car.
The closer you get to the clipping points,
the more points you're gonna get awarded.
But the key is to not hit them.
If you can brush them,
you're gonna get maximum points.
When I say "brush",
I mean don't knock them over.
If you can be
within half a metre,
you're gonna score high.
I'd also score points for holding the car
in as impressive a drift as possible.
You've got to keep the throttle in
so that you maintain the drift with good angle,
and that's only up to you about how much steering input
and how much accelerator you put in.
The cars are designed to run at almost 90°.
They've got massive amounts of steering angle,
so you can drive on the end of your rack.
OK. So I don't get awarded points
for how quickly I do the whole thing?
No, that doesn't come into it.
It's all about angle, line,
and how much you excite everybody.
It's judged showing off, isn't it?
- Basically, yeah. - Yeah, OK.
As my car was prepped for the big event,
the competitors, organised by my colleagues,
finally arrived.
And they weren't what I was expecting.
It seems James and Jeremy
want their old mate to do well after all,
because, unless I'm mistaken,
it would appear that I'm up against a child
and a man with no arms.
OK.
That's my competition.
With the judges in position,
it was time for the contest to begin.
First up was the disabled gentleman,
Bartek OstaBowski from Poland.
The fact is, Bartek...
is deficient in the arms department to the tune of two.
When I say "deficient", I don't mean deficient.
He... He has...
He has no arms... at all.
So, I mean, it's brilliant that he's having a go.
Really, it's tremendous.
Bartek, who lost his arms in a motorcycling accident,
overcomes his disability by steering with his foot
and changing gear with his shoulder.
And unfortunately for me, he's rather good at it.
How is he...?
Good for you!
Really good for you!
Yeah! Good!
This was nice.
Out of a maximum of 30 points,
the judges awarded Bartek a score of 22.
And then it was the turn of the child,
Conor Shanahan, who's just 13 years old.
Here we go. Primary-school drifting with Conor.
He'll go ten yards, get bored,
and start crying for his mummy.
However...
Whoo!
He's 13! I mean, he's five years off voting!
The judges awarded the cocky little sh...
talented young man a score of 27.
And then it was my turn.
Right, this is it.
My shot at glory.
Everything I'd learned
would be brought into sharp focus.
Gas, gas, gas, gas, gas!
The key is to not hit them.
Here, in the moment of truth...
I'm waiting for amber. There it is.
Amber and...
Forward to glory for Grand Tour!
Clutch kick!
Oh, shit!
Oh! And across the line!
Yeah!
Yeah, I clipped the flag.
That's probably an extra point, I imagine.
Erm... I'll just restart,
because I wanted to stop there for a minute.
Yep. Oh, I've stalled again.
Yep. Yep.
Thank you.
So...
Hold on. What was your final score?
Two.
- Two? - Yes.
You were useless!
No, listen, gentlemen. Gentlemen.
I have to say, I'm delighted
that you now have, albeit limited, drifting skills,
cos it means I have a playmate,
as this short montage from the last 12 weeks shows.
Yeah, you see?
Yeah. Yeah. On the edge.
Now, I admit... I admit it's not...
It's not important work, really.
No, we haven't actually cured anything.
No, we haven't brought peace
to troubled parts of the world or any of that.
No, but it is a job.
It is a job, and we're very good at it.
- No, you're not very good at it. - We are.
No, well, I've got some items
from the unseen footage bin
that would suggest otherwise.
Unfortunately, we don't have time for that.
Sadly. Cor, that's a pity!
No, no. You're wrong. We do have time.
Who wants to see that? Nobody.
OK. Let's roll it.
Here is Richard Hammond.
Can he contain 170 horsepower?
No, it would appear not.
Jeremy Clarkson, Porsche 911 GT3.
Oh, there we go. You see, I have actually made a mess of that.
Yes, you have, and we saw it.
Richard Hammond negotiating Your Name Here.
Your name, in this instance,
is Total Bell End, it would appear.
Clarkson, has he tamed the GT3?
No!
I've had an idea. Hold on.
I bet it wasn't this.
Watch this. Ready?
Never say that.
Even if you're just in a four-door family saloon,
it's disastrous.
Right, Richard Hammond, has he got it yet?
Yes, I think he has. Yes! Yes!
No. No, he hasn't got it.
- I tell you what... - Nobody's perfect!
- A couple of moments. - Yeah, just two or three, four, five.
Don't worry. Don't worry.
In the future, we'll just get
an armless man and small boy to do those bits.
Shut up! Shut up!
As opposed to a fat man and a small boy.
Anyway...
Listen, on that terrible disappointment,
it is time to end not just the show
but the entire series.
Thank you so much for watching.
Thank you all for coming.
And we'll see you later in the year
for more of this.
Take care. Goodbye.
.srt Extracted and Resynced by Dan4Jem, AD.MMXVII.II