I consider myself a knowledgeable fan of F1 in particular and motorsports in general. That being said, I only discovered the joys of
Top Gear a year or so ago, and only through youtube clips of the test drives. The first full episode I've seen was this past Sunday's (s11e01).
Actually, that's not entirely true.
Top Gear was shown for a brief time on one of the cable channels we have here in the US, I think it was TLC, maybe five or six years ago. It bombed, and the one or two episodes I saw were really, REALLY not entertaining to me.
Now, however, I love it. I must have been in a permanent bad mood back then. And a duck in a bad mood is a terrible thing...
Anyway, I suppose it's not impossible that he really HADN'T heard of
Top Gear. Not bloody likely, but not impossible.