2015 reviewed in ten excellent numbers

Top Gear’s annual Speed Week took place at the Red Bull Ring in Austria this year, with thousands of horsepower thrashing around on the track in the name of important consumer journalism. Mostly, anyway.

Oddly though, most people’s main highlight had nothing to do with the action on the circuit, but rather what was going on above it. Red Bull’s Cobra attack helicopter chased cars around a circuit like a cheetah in pursuit of gazelle, which culminated in a do-not-try-this-at-home style race with a McLaren P1 GTR.  

Relive the spectacular footage by clicking on these pixels.

That’s 19.08 metres, obviously.

Stunt man Terry Grant set the record in a Jaguar F-Pace on a custom-built loop that was constructed at the Niederrad Racecourse in Germany in the lead-up to the Frankfurt Motor Show in September.

The Brit hit a max load of 6.5g whilst keeping the car in the narrow speed window required to make it stick and come out in once piece on the other side.

Oh, and he did it with a broken hand too. Crazy.

Average prices have come down once again in Britain, with the cheapest offers dropping below a pound per litre in various parts of the country.

It’s largely thanks to the decreasing value of crude oil, which fell under $40 per barrel for the first time since 2009 earlier in December.

A non-petrol future is on the horizon though. Several countries have committed to zero emissions vehicle sales only by 2050, which gives us just 35 years to invent long-range batteries. Or something else entirely.

Ferdinand Piech resigned as the CEO of VW Group on April 25 this year following a boardroom struggle which saw rival Martin Winterkorn rise to power. His time at the top didn’t last long though: on September 23, Winterkorn was clearing his desk as the emissions scandal began making headlines around the globe. VW’s ‘cheat device’ will cost the company billions in recalls and fines, with the extent of the problem still not fully understood. Ouch.

Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso endured a torrid year at the back of the F1 grid this season, an ordeal made worse by the fact that poor reliability of various parts compounded their misery by costing them 155 places on the grid apiece. The two world champions managed just 27 points between them over the course of 19 races in 2015, 3.84 per cent of what Mercedes managed on their way to the constructors title.

Meanwhile, the other 18 cars amassed a combined total of 367 grid place penalties, only 57 more than McLaren managed on their own.

Speaking of McLaren, the final P1 rolled off the production line less than three weeks ago after a run that lasted just over two years.

Each vehicle took 800 hours to put together, requiring a team of over a hundred people to assemble the 903bhp, 217mph monster. Yikes.

The model isn’t quite dead though: the cessation of production means that McLaren can spend more time building the P1 GTR. Hooray!

Give or take a few inches.

In one of our longest featured drives of the year, TG’s own Ollie Kew piloted the i8 from the inner sanctum of England’s capital to the much colder sanctum of Scandinavia.

Hitting a top speed of 163mph on Germany’s autobahns, the i8 averaged 34.6mpg en route to the ice lake shenanigans near Kall in Sweden.

That’s going on for six years and four months.

So what was the seller so determined to shift? A classic Ferrari California that only a handful of people could buy? Or maybe a near-scrap, Cat D rust box with an overly ambitious price tag?

Um, no. It was a Vauxhall Corsa registered for part exchange, having first appeared on the site some time in 2009.

The Porsche 919 hybrid driven by Earl Bamber, Nick Tandy and Nico Hulkenberg completed 395 laps of Circuit de la Sarthe, the second furthest winning distance ever behind the 5410.71km record by Audi in 2010.

The shortest ever victorious distance was set in 1924 – the second edition of the 24 hour race – by John Duff and Frank Clement in a 3-litre Bentley Sport. The duo completed 2077.34km.

Pirelli might have their critics, but their rubber distribution is extremely impressive. Nearly 36,000 tyres (or 9,000 sets) were supplied to the teams in 2015, including 6,108 which were set aside for testing.

All of the tyres are eventually returned to their manufacturer for environmentally friendly disposal: the rubber is shredded and then burned at extremely high temperatures to ensure that no noxious gases are released into the atmosphere. Neat.