
The new season of Top Gear will feature few familiar faces after the departure of its three presenters, Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond. This week, news has leaked that the show’s executive producer and one of its script editors have also left the show.
But today, the BBC has announced that presenter Chris Evans will be joined by two new presenters, including the first woman to front the show in recent years. Chris Harris and Sabine Schmitz are both virtually unknown in the world of British TV: Harris is a motoring journalist, while Schmitz is a German racecar driver.
Schmitz should be familiar to Top Gear fans, though. In an appearance on the show in 2009 she drove a Ford transit van around the Nurburgring racetrack in under ten minutes:
In a moment of dazzling irony, Jeremy Clarkson suggests at the end of the second clip that Schmitz should replace host Richard Hammond:
“So let’s just work this out, you’re cheaper than he is, you’re much better looking than he is, you’re quicker than he is, you’re taller, and you speak better English…”
Little did they know.