{"id":340263,"date":"2025-12-10T21:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T21:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/340263\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T21:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T21:33:09","slug":"how-lewis-hamilton-overruled-ron-dennis-to-drive-on-top-gear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/340263\/","title":{"rendered":"How Lewis Hamilton overruled Ron Dennis to drive on “Top Gear”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former\u00a0Top Gear and The Grand Tour executive producer Andy Wilman has revealed that Lewis Hamilton<\/a> personally overruled McLaren<\/a> boss Ron Dennis to appear in the BBC show’s “Star in a Reasonably Priced Car” segment in the famous and humble Suzuki Liana instead of a Mercedes<\/a> supercar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking on the\u00a0Midweek F1\u00a0podcast, Wilman explained that the seven-time champion’s first visit to the Dunsfold test track came straight off the back of his rookie Formula 1 season, in which he missed the championship win by just a single point.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, the first time he came down, I think it was when he just lost that rookie season, the championship by [one point],\u201d Wilman said. \u201cSo McLaren is still Ron Dennis days, so we’re getting all Ron Dennis-ish-ness coming down the phone, like ‘he’s in a Suzuki Liana,’ you know?<\/p>\n

“And then like I think it was Matt Bishop was a PR at the time. Matt Bishop sort of rings and he goes, \u2018Oh, Ron wants him to do it in like an SLR.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilman admitted that the\u00a0Top Gear\u00a0team pushed back hard, insisting that the whole point of the segment was to level the playing field with the modest Suzuki.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Lewis <\/p>\n

Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari<\/p>\n

Photo by: Ahmad AlShehab \/ NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we’re like, \u2018It’s not the point, like… same car,’\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd he went, \u2018Yeah, you know what Ron’s like.\u2019 And Ron’s gone, \u2018Yeah, but he’s a Mercedes man.\u2019 And we’re like, \u2018Jesus Christ, Ron, is anybody going to go, well, I’m going to buy a Liana now. I won’t buy that S-Class.\u2019 It’s like, let it go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamilton’s love for the British car show was a strong motivator for the young driver, who was keen to join presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May in their famous studio.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then I think Lewis stepped in even as a kid and went, \u2018I’m doing Top Gear,\u2019 because he was such a kid and he’d grown up watching it, you know?\u201d Wilman said. \u201cSo, it was a red-letter day for him. Now, obviously now he’s stratospheric and everything bows to him, but back then he was like, \u2018I’m coming down.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The now-Ferrari driver would go on to set a very competitive lap time in the Suzuki, matching Jenson Button’s lap time despite driving in wet conditions.<\/p>\n

“He was amazing. I remember watching that second-to-last corner,” the producer continued. “He was incredible, which was that sort of…\u00a0I don’t know who came up with it, but it’s like you’re going from a motorway to a country lane almost at a right\u00a0angle.<\/p>\n

“And he seemed to get it better than anyone else. But it was a wet time so he wasn’t top of the board.”<\/p>\n

Hamilton eventually set the fastest time on the board on his second attempt with a time of\u00a01m42.9s, only to be beaten by former F1 driver Daniel Ricciardo<\/a> by seven tenths soon after.<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former\u00a0Top Gear and The Grand Tour executive producer Andy Wilman has revealed that Lewis Hamilton personally overruled McLaren…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[187638,64,63,817,183488,826,813,816,189043,823,945,85,1511],"class_list":["post-340263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-abu-dhabi-testing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-f1-abu-dhabi-grand-prix","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-how-lewis-hamilton-overruled-ron-dennis-to-drive-on-top-gear","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-mercedes","tag-sports","tag-trendingteam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}