Chris Evans says Top Gear will be watched by 'millions' by the time planet ends

Top Gear's new host Chris Evans has launched a fierce defence regarding the motoring show's flailing ratings and suggested it will gain viewers over time.

IBTimes UK recently reported that the BBC was forced to come to Evans and co-host Matt LeBlanc's aid when they failed to win over fans amid Top Gear's drop in viewing figures, pulling in only 2.8 million viewers for the second episode on Sunday (5 June).

BBC boss Alan Tyler said: "Last night, Chris, Matt and the team once again brilliantly led BBC Two's biggest show of the day, by some margin. It secured a peak audience of 3.3m, and the show again remained the most requested programme on BBC iPlayer."

But though ratings may be low for the revamped series, Evans has said that "hundreds of millions" of people will eventually watch it...before the world comes to an end. Right you are.

Defending the motoring show, which has already featured a realm of celebrity guests including Jenson Button and Tinie Tempah, Evans snapped back at critics in a zealous interview with Buzzfeed. To justify the low ratings, the Radio 2 presenter claimed that the 'haters' don't embody the majority of fans, and that the audience numbers for the first show is not a fair representation of how many people will actually watch it...over the course of eternity.

He said: "Once last week's episode fizzles away into the universe, because that is the only way it is going to disappear is when the planet disappears, it would have been watched by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions more people than when it was first broadcast."

"So now the initial broadcast of a programme like Top Gear is the seed, and it will grow into a forest for just the one episode afterwards. It is that inaccurate to judge a programme from its first broadcast," he added.

Comparing it to a fictional television series, he continued: "I didn't catch up with Breaking Bad until halfway through the final series I started to watch. I was five years late to that, and then it had its whole resurgence. That's the way it is now. Programme's got to be good. Don't get me wrong. As long as the show is all right."

Discussing why Blackpool was the chosen location for the first episode, Evans insinuated it was because he didn't want to look too big for his boots, and that he and LeBlanc had to "earn their stripes" before filming in a desirable location.

Evans added: "You can't just jet off to the Caribbean for the first film, in our opinion, you couldn't do that. That was an option, but we really wanted to earn our stripes so we don't get Lamborghinis, we don't get Ferraris, we get two Reliant Rialtos and we got to get to Blackpool in the middle of the winter. Good f**king luck with that."

The new Top Gear series continues this Sunday 12 June at 8pm on BBC2.

Some of Chris Evans' recent tweets about Top Gear: