Top Gear is reportedly coming back to television after being shelved, with the said to have started searching for a brand new team to front the reboot. The new line-up would replace Freddie Flintoff, Paddy McGuinness and Chris Harris, and the programme could be back on screens next year.
The reported move would mark the latest turn for a show that has spent four years in flux. Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May fronted Top Gear from 2002 until 2015, before Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc had a brief run in 2016. Flintoff, Harris and McGuinness took over in 2019, trying to rebuild a series that had already lost its long-running trio.
The rested the UK show in 2023 after the crash that left Flintoff with several broken ribs and facial injuries at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome in Surrey. He was driving an open-top Morgan Super 3 at 130mph while filming in December 2022 when the three-wheeled vehicle flipped over and crashed. He was not wearing a helmet and was airlifted to hospital. In its statement at the time, the said: “Given the exceptional circumstances, the has decided to rest the UK show for the foreseeable future.” It also said it remained committed to Flintoff, Harris and McGuinness and that it would have more to say in the near future.
The latest report says the corporation has already begun work on a new series while it looks for hosts. That matters because Top Gear is not just a cancelled format waiting on a decision; it is a major brand the has already admitted it could not simply leave behind. A source quoted by the newspaper said bosses are keen to revive the show because they had never filled the space it left behind, and because viewers still want a motoring programme of that scale.
Flintoff, 48, has since returned to public life. He made his first public appearance after the crash in September 2023 and is now appearing in an ITV documentary called Freddie Flintoff's Mission: Nepal. His return gives the reboot a very different backdrop from the one it had before the Surrey accident, when the presenter-led version of Top Gear was still trying to settle after the 2019 handover.
The has not publicly confirmed the reboot, but the direction of travel is clear from the reporting: the show is being prepared for a return after a long pause, and it will not come back in the same form. If Top Gear does reappear next year, it will do so with a new cast, a changed mood and the shadow of Flintoff’s crash still hanging over the brand that once defined the ’s motoring television.
