James May said it will be a “shame” if the BBC does not give Top Gear a “rethink”.
The 60-year-old, who used to present the long-running motoring show with Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond, spoke after the corporation said the hit series will be off air for the “foreseeable future”.
May told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the decision is “very sad”.
But he said: “It does need a bit of a rethink. It’s time for a new format and a new approach to the subject because the subject has not been this interesting, I suspect, since the car was invented.
“And it would be a shame if an organisation like the BBC didn’t have something to say about it.”
Asked what a new format could involve, May said he and his co-presenters Clarkson and Hammond “already” fill a gap for a show of this type on Prime Video.
He said that when the trio created The Grand Tour after leaving Top Gear to 2015, the latter followed a “similar format to the way we left it”.
“I’m not saying I know what it is but there must be one,” May said. “There must be another way of doing a show about cars that will embrace more fulsomely many of the questions being asked of cars that weren’t being asked of cars.”
He said this could involve a “greater scrutiny” of cars, including the way the vehicles are powered, and said: “You could still do that in an entertaining and informative kind of way.”
Top Gear’s production has been halted since host Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff, 45, was taken to hospital in December 2022.
The former England cricket captain was badly hurt in an accident at the Top Gear test track at Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey.
In a statement given to the PA news agency on Tuesday, the BBC said it is “excited about new projects being developed” with the current presenting line-up of Flintoff, former Take Me Out host Paddy McGuinness and automotive journalist Chris Harris.
In addition, BBC Studios said a health and safety production review of Top Gear, which did not cover the accident but looked at previous seasons, found that there were “important learnings which would need to be rigorously applied to future Top Gear UK productions”.
A statement said: “The report includes a number of recommendations to improve approaches to safety as Top Gear is a complex programme-making environment routinely navigating tight filming schedules and ambitious editorial expectations – challenges often experienced by long-running shows with an established on and off screen team.
“Learnings included a detailed action plan involving changes in the ways of working, such as increased clarity on roles and responsibilities and better communication between teams for any future Top Gear production.”
