TG.com’s best interviews of 2014

We found out many interesting and important things this year. We found out Gary Oldman drives an old Porsche 550 Spyder. We learned John Surtees ended up four inches shorter on one side of his body than the other following that horrific accident.

And we learned just how grateful Lewis Hamilton - now a double Formula One world champion and the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year - feels about his new life at Mercedes.

So click forth to read Top Gear's best interviews from the year.

"But I still can't believe where I am sometimes. It's very surreal. Unthinkable. I just give thanks every day because I know it won't last forever."

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"I mean, I nearly got hit the other day by a Prius backing up because I couldn't hear the f****** thing."

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"I had an intersection accident when I was 16 in a car, but the motorcycles are the ones I've crashed on the most. It was rough. This one time I was doing over 100mph and lost it... I didn't know at the time I had been injured, because I ended up in the grass.

"So when I dove off the bike I ended up doing some rolls and put a dent in the helmet. I had a bit of eye trouble and concussion. Thankfully I've never broken anything though..."

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"My first car was a Volkswagen Rabbit. It was one of the early ones - you call it a VW Golf over here - but it was a Rabbit back in the day. It was orange - like a pumpkin colour - that stood out in a crowd. You could always find it in a parking lot. That was my first car, and it was quick, fast, it handled great... I've been pretty lucky with cars. At the time I just sort of loved the fact I had a car. That was a big deal for me."

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"I am friends with many people outside of the business, and they will criticise me rather than mythologise me. The important thing is that I am consistent with myself. I never change. I hear things that people say and you know it's bulls**t. My values come from my parents and friends. I had the good luck to have a strong family."

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"Yes, I'm [often] reminded racing is not a science. But I go to Monza and see the first six cars on the grid not a Ferrari and not powered by a Ferrari engine. Since 2008 we've had phenomenal drivers - and I consider we have the best right now - but the chemistry has not worked."

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"I had an internal rupture of the kidneys, I split my pelvis, knocked some pieces off the bottom of my spine and ended up in a hospital in Toronto. I didn't really know anything until I came to, some considerable time afterwards. But the accident left me four inches shorter on my left side than my right."

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"I don't regret a single moment of my time at Lotus. A good friend of mine, a journalist, passed on his favourite saying to me, and I really believe it: "There are three kinds of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch what happens and those who say, ‘What happened?'" It was a great experience. We were trying to do in a year what other companies would take five years to do. It was like boot camp..."

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"It was just me pushing too hard. Normally if you push too hard on the track you miss your line, or go over the run-off. Worst-case scenario, you go into the gravel. At Goodwood, if you put one wheel on the grass, you're going into the hay bales.

"And the thing is, through the whole race season, I finished every event, and had barely a scratch on the car. Then one place where the eyes of the motoring world are on me, it was a pretty miserable place to do it! Nissan were brilliant about it - all they wanted to know was, ‘Are you okay?'"

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"At the end of my F1 career I was told, ‘Just shut up and drive'. That's what I hated. This [Rallycross] is back to the roots of racing. It's raw, fast and exciting. And where every other form of motorsport is taking horsepower away - why would you do that? - here they're trying to boost more in. It's the racing world flipped upside down, and that's how it should be. Crazy."

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