Top Gear’s Top 9: best walls

The Goodwood Festival of Speed hillclimb packs an awful lot of jeopardy into what is essentially 1.1 miles of West Sussex driveway. Molecomb corner’s the infamous blind bend where brand new supercars and motorsport classics have all come a cropper, but survive that and you’ve still got to negotiate the narrow straits of the Flint Wall, waiting hungrily to tear into priceless bodywork if a driver dares cut the corner.

Strong and Beautiful Wall rating: 8/10

The Canadian GP can usually be relied upon to serve up one of the more exciting F1 GPs of the season – Jenson Button’s last lap chasedown of Sebastian Vettel in 2011 springs to mind as one of the greatest of all time. But from the moment the light goes green in free practice, eyes tend to be focused on the chicane left-hander at turn 14: the Wall of Champions.

Over the years, multiple F1 greats have run the wall too close and paid a carbon fibre-shattering price – Damon Hill, Michael Schumacher, Jacques Villeneuve (on the circuit named after his late father) all crashed here in 1999. Nico Rosberg, Jenson Button and Seb Vettel have also stalked away from the corner in a huff.

Strong and Beautiful Wall rating: 9/10

If you’re well-liked enough by Ferrari to be allowed the honour of factory collection of your new supercar, then you’re unlikely to depart without getting a selfie under the famous factory gate, with the company name emblazoned over the road. It’s not an architectural masterpiece – and if you arrive in a rival car, Ferrari’s heavies will chase you away, TG can testify. But there’s a touch of romance about the hallowed gates, and the legendary cars that’ve travelled here.

Strong and Beautiful Wall rating: 5/10

Carnival attractions in which daredevils rode motorcycles around a cylindrical track of wooden planks were being referred to as ‘Walls of Death’ from the moment they were invented in 1911. Either that’s sterling gallows humour or just plain pessimistic. Happily, they aren’t so lethal that they’re not still regularly wheeled out at talent shows and fetes today, featuring cars, motorbikes, and a healthy sprinkling of lunatics.

Strong and Beautiful Wall rating: 7/10

Driving through Monte Carlo isn’t easy if you’re a civilian in a road car. The roads are tight, there are many junctions and traffic builds up quickly. If said traffic is 19 other 900bhp single-seaters and you’re racing them all to claim one third of motorsport’s Triple Crown, then it’s particularly stressful. And just to make the Monaco GP that bit trickier, the fastest part of the circuit is a tunnel exited at 160mph, leading into the lap’s only real overtaking zone.

Strong and Beautiful Wall rating: 6/10

Did you know Great Wall Motors Ltd was founded in 1984, giving it more heritage than Pagani, Ariel and Tesla? Did you know it’s China’s biggest producer of SUVs and pick-up trucks? Did you know it’s named after-…oh, you did. Okay. Well, good guess.

Strong and Beautiful Wall rating: 3/10

Currently in charge of Porsche’s alarmingly successful motorsport division, from 2010-2014 Walliser was effectively ‘Mr Porsche 918 Spyder’, heading up the stratospherically complicated project to build Porsche’s first hybrid hypercar. Not only did the result stand up in the white heat of battle to the likes of the Ferrari LaFerrari and McLaren P1, it was the only member of the so-called holy trinity to post a verified Nürburgring lap time. Its 6min 57sec run in 2014 was the first time a road car had ever done a sub-7min ‘Ring time.

All 918 examples sold, earning Porsche a cool £700m for all the hard work calibrating its fiendishly complex drivetrain and chassis. Job well done.

Strong and Beautiful Wall rating: 9/10

Before it was consumed in a not-at-all suspicious fire at Top Gear’s top secret set and props storage facility, the Cool Wall was the only yardstick of taste and decency that mattered in the motoring kingdom. To this day, we know that even Leonardo DiCaprio owning a Toyota Prius doesn’t make it cool, and an Aston Martin DB9 was so far beyond Sub Zero it had to live in its own fridge.

Strong and Beautiful Wall rating: 7/10

He maxed the McLaren F1 at Ehra-Lessien while giving a witty understated commentary. He won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in one of the most stunning-looking machines ever to race at La Sarthe, the 1988 Silk Cut Jaguar XJR-9LM. He won the Daytona 24 Hours three times. And now, he’s Bugatti’s official test driver and coaches billionaires on how to drive their 1,479bhp Chiron. There may be better CVs out there. We just can’t think of any of them right now.

Strong and Beautiful Wall rating: 10/10