Special to feature stars making attempt for fastest ever lap around show’s track, as it emerges BBC show has not yet booked it for its next series

Jeremy Clarkson and Chris Evans will try to record the fastest ever lap around the Top Gear track when TFI Friday returns for its 20th anniversary special on Channel 4 tonight.

Clarkson, the former Top Gear presenter, and Evans – the man tipped to replace him – travelled to the Top Gear track at Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey to attempt to steal the record in a LaFerrari supercar.



It will be something of a coup for Evans, the Radio 2 breakfast show presenter, and a bittersweet return for Clarkson, axed from the BBC2 show after his assault on a producer.

The track has not yet been booked by Top Gear for the new series of the BBC2 show which is due to return next year.

The show is not yet in pre-production – several weeks behind its typical schedule – with its presenter lineup still unknown.

Chris Evans could host new TFI Friday series if 20th anniversary show is a hit Read more

Evans described it as “the lap Top Gear wanted to do before they were taken off air” and said they could be the “last recorded laps around the Top Gear track”.



Evans said: “We will be doing one or two of what might end up being the last recorded laps around the Top Gear track.”



“One will be a bit of a curveball and the other should be the fastest lap ever recorded there. It is the lap Top Gear wanted to do before they were taken off air, in a La Ferrari,” he told the Sun.



“We have done that lap. That leaderboard has been there for 12 years. We are going to try and break the record. I honestly don’t know if we have. But it’s the same camera crew who filmed every week on Top Gear who did our lap.”



It will be Clarkson’s first TV appearance since the final three episodes of the last series of Top Gear were shelved following his suspension and then axing after a fracas with a member of the production team.



Clarkson previously pulled out of a planned appearance on Have I Got News For You on BBC1 just weeks after he was axed.



He will also be back on BBC2 for the last time – for the foreseeable future at least – in a 75-minute edition of Top Gear featuring previously unseen footage.



BBC2’s Top Gear trailer featuring Jeremy Clarkson

The fastest lap recorded around the Top Gear track, driven by the Stig, was in a Pagani Huayra in 1 minute 13.8s seconds in the first episode of series 19 broadcast in February 2013.



Clarkson auctioned a lap around the track at a charity event at the Roundhouse in Camden earlier this year.

An audience member paid £100,000 for the chance to drive round the track, Clarkson saying: “I’ll go down to Surrey and I’ll do one last lap of that track before the fucking bastards sack me.”



Pictures emerged earlier this week of Evans and various production members – and high-powered cars – at the Top Gear track.



The 90-minute live edition of TFI Friday, which will feature guests including Blur, Liam Gallagher and Shaun Ryder, will air on Channel 4 at 9pm on Friday.

