More than a million fans signed a petition urging that Clarkson keep his job.

He didn’t. And his co-hosts resigned in solidarity.

But the show must go on, or else its worldwide audience of 350 million would be sad. So “Top Gear” hired several new hosts, notably Chris Evans (no, not the movie star, but rather a middle-aged British TV personality who wears black-framed nerd glasses) and Matt LeBlanc (yes, the former “Friends” star).

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Evans is annoyingly hyper. LeBlanc is kind of phlegmatic, like, “Yeah, I’m here flashing my killer smile. Now give me my paycheck.”

Despite the less than thrilling hosts, the premiere got off to a fast start. A Dodge Viper ACR, with “bespoke sticky tires,” raced a Chevrolet Corvette Z06 through a course at the U.S. Air Force “Top Gun” academy in Nevada. A race car driver was at the wheel of each muscle car, with a pilot as front-seat passenger. The Viper won, though the Corvette was handicapped: Its driver, Sabine “I feel the need for speed” Schmitz, had to stop to let her pilot take a puke break.

But the show lost momentum with a dragged-out U.S. vs. U.K. race between Evans and LeBlanc. They drove rickety three-wheeled Reliant vehicles through chilly rain; LeBlanc’s car kept stalling. They switched to jeeps, towed ice cream vans and drove up a muddy mountain. None of this makes for especially riveting TV.

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Equally unimpressive was Evans’ interview with chef Gordon Ramsay and actor Jesse Eisenberg, who shared uninteresting memories of cars they’d owned.

There’s a lot more drama in the Twitter fight about the show than in the show itself. Clarkson fans are tweeting that studio segments featured “canned laughter” and that “hardly anyone claps.” Last week Evans tweeted in reply, “ ‘Top Gear’ audience grew throughout the hour [of the premiere].” The battle is on!