Top Gear #29 and on that bombshell ...

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Well, Lewis Hamilton came down to our windswept airfield, put all thoughts of his 850bhp F1 car to one side, and climbed into the next best thing, our mighty Suzuki Liana.

As regular viewers will know, we retired the Liana from Reasonably Priced Car duties a few series back, but we keep it on standby for the odd occasion when an F1 driver pops in.

He scowled when he saw the wet track, because any chances of beating the Stig's time of 1.44.4, done on a dry track, were out of the window. Also there was oil dotted around, pissed out by the Vauxhall VXR8 that we'd lapped earlier in the day.

Now regarding this oil business, conspiracy theorists, pull a chair up, because Lewis's job was to set the fastest wet time on the Top Gear F1 board, and the only other wet time belongs to Mark Webber, who's Australian.

Well you don't need to be that brainy girl on Scooby Doo to work out that the night before Lewis's lap, Mark, having seen the weather conditions for Dunsfold, has driven down to Vauxhall's press garage in Luton, scaled the walls, broken in and loosened something or other on the VXR8, and it being an Australian car, he knows which bit to loosen and where the oil is and everything.

Anyway, Lewis took his tuition from the Stig very seriously, then we set the stop watch and sent him off. The lap time you'll find out if you watch Sunday's show, but I will say I've been in the edit for two days since we recorded the show, and I still keep replaying his second to last corner, because I've never seen a piece of driving quite like it. The world is governed by the rules of physics, but he just seems to have his own set.

After the show I drove home from the recording, still thinking about Lewis. This isn't unusual in itself, because I'm normally turning over a guest's appearance on the show, deciding about which bits of the interview to drop, which to leave in etc. But on that drive I was just thinking about Lewis himself.

Like most people I've seen what he can do on the track, but it's only when you meet him that you get a sense of the force that seems to drive him. It's not that he's intense - in fact it's a while since I've met a 22-year-old so polite, or an F1 driver so aware of what's going on around him - it's just that he literally seems to have some Jedi force pulsing through him.

He will obviously go on to make hundreds of millions in his career, but he's one of the few I'd believe when he says the money doesn't matter. Like Schumacher and Senna, he's connected by an invisible thread to a race car, and racing it is his reason for being here.

Whilst he was signing some books before the interview, I reminded him he'd once said that if he died on the track, then so be it, and he just nodded and carried on signing as if I'd asked him if he was having cold turkey on Boxing Day.

The other thing you notice is he's so self-sufficient for a 22-year-old. Most F1 drivers need more maintenance and nannying than the car, but he doesn't seem to need anybody. In the interview, in Clarkson's backyard, he sat opposite one of the most confident broadcasters in the world and scored some cracking blows when the banter kicked off.

Jeremy asked him about girls and living the James Hunt life, and Lewis didn't want to go there, but I've never seen a question so beautifully deflected and kicked off into the weeds; John Humphrys would struggle.

During the break after Lewis's interview, a couple of us from the Top Gear office were having a fag round the back of the hangar, and he joined us for a chat. He asked if he could come back and set a dry time, and we thought he was just being polite, but you could tell he meant it because he was saying how if the appointed day was wet, the deal was he could cancel, but if it was dry, he'd be there.

The three of us were standing looking at him thinking: "Won't you have more pressing issues on your mind next July, like Silverstone or Monza?"

But as far as he's concerned, there's unfinished business at Top Gear. Bollocks, we'll have to cancel the Chuckle Brothers.

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Op zondag 2 december 2007 18:38 schreef Joost-mag-het-weten het volgende:
Dus ze hebben Lewis op een natte omloop laten rijden waardoor al het plezier eraf is ...

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Op zondag 2 december 2007 21:32 schreef Joost-mag-het-weten het volgende:

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Goh, "waarschijnlijk", waarom nemen we eigenlijk zomaar aan dat Lewis zomaar sneller zou zijn in de Liana dan wereldkampioenen F1 als Hill en Mansell ?

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Op zondag 2 december 2007 21:42 schreef vw_caddy het volgende:
Hij komt niet weg

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Op zondag 2 december 2007 21:46 schreef Bruce117 het volgende:
God save the queen

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Op zondag 2 december 2007 22:01 schreef Joost-mag-het-weten het volgende:

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I'm bored now

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Op zondag 2 december 2007 22:02 schreef Joost-mag-het-weten het volgende:

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22h Nederlandse tijd

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Op zondag 2 december 2007 22:33 schreef j0rrit het volgende:
Vond dit eigenlijk de minste uitzending van het seizoen. Allerlei snelle tests zonder diepgang. Alleen de lap van Hamilton was leuk om te zien. Echt onwijs dat hij op een natte baan inclusief olie een dergelijke tijd weet neer te zetten. Hoop dat hij nog een keer terug mag komen wanneer het droog is.

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Op zondag 2 december 2007 22:47 schreef dapluiz het volgende:
Vond het wel grappig hoe ontspannen die lewis op een natte baan bijna de snelste tijd neerzet Alleen jammer dat we geen "reactie" van de stig te zien kregen

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Op maandag 3 december 2007 02:09 schreef PeuRac het volgende:
Wat was de tijd van die BMW nu ik wil wel eens weten hoe hard die kan. Ik heb overigens in een artikel gelezen dat deze BMW's (ze hebben er meer, deze worden gebruikt tijdens de rijtrainingen van BMW) ingesteld kunnen worden op 70/80/90% van de snelste ronde gereden door een testcoureur. (3 verschillende settings dus).

Dus dan vraag ik me af wat die auto dan reed op de automatische piloot.