BBC2 controller Kim Shillinglaw said she is “excited” and “terrified” by the prospect of bringing back Top Gear with its new presenter Chris Evans following the axing of Jeremy Clarkson.

Shillinglaw said the new incarnation of the BBC’s most valuable show would retain many aspects of the series when it was presented by Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond.

But she said it would also be “really different”, with a new, supersized Top Gear track at Dunsfold in Surrey, home of the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car segment, expected to be one of the changes.

She said Clarkson’s axing after a fracas with a producer was a “very sad episode” and a reminder of “very, very human frailties”.

“So excited, of course terrified,” Shillinglaw said of bringing back Top Gear, which generates £50m a year for the corporation’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide.

“I really can’t think of a person that better combines two things that are really central to Top Gear, no matter what era it’s in,” she said of Evans, the Radio 2 DJ who will present a new series of Channel 4’s TFI Friday before Top Gear’s return.

“One is an absolute passion for cars – that’s so important to Top Gear, it isn’t just an entertainment programme, it is actually about something and without that you haven’t got a show – but also incredibly spontaneous, incredibly surprising, that really remarkable quality a handful of presenters have, which is you don’t quite know what is going to happen next.

“It’s going to be different – there will be continuity – but it will be really different.

“You will see Dunsfold looking quite interesting, the presenter line-up is going to be a bit different. There will be some changes to the show. It’s scary but it’s really exciting.”

Asked about Clarkson’s departure from the show, Shillinglaw said at the Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival on Friday: “It was a very sad episode in lots of ways. For me, the biggest reminder is for all this is telly, for all this is business, a competitive industry, at the end of the day it’s about human beings.”

Clarkson was dropped by the BBC in March after an internal report found the presenter was responsible for an “unprovoked physical and verbal attack” that left colleague Oisin Tymon bleeding and seeking hospital treatment.

Shillinglaw said: “It was just a very, very human situation. I will always be fond of Jeremy and James and Richard … great respect for their craft skills.

“It was just very, very sad the way in which very, very human frailties, that you have to … be respectful of and understanding of, became part of the story.

“But you get to a point where, everybody knows what happened, it wasn’t something that at the BBC was acceptable. I don’t think any organisation would have found it acceptable. For me, the biggest story is that sometimes human beings are bigger than the imperatives of telly.”