The Grand Tour season 2: when will it be on Amazon Prime? Plus, all we know so far

Former Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have made the jump from the BBC to Amazon Prime, with the first series of their new motoring show The Grand Tour becoming one of the online streaming service's biggest hits. But what can we expect from season two? Here's everything we know so far.

When will the second season of The Grand Tour arrive on Amazon Prime?

The series will begin on December 9, with the first episode released at midnight. Subsequent episodes will appear at midnight every Friday.

When can I see a trailer? 

Right now, as long as you're an Amazon Prime member. To celebrate Prime Day, the streaming service has released a 30-second teaser featuring the usual vehicular mayhem in exotic locales. Watch it here.

Where will they be filming?

Production is already under way for the second series, and viewers can expect to see The Grand Tour's travelling studio-tent pop up in Mozambique, Georgia and the USA. Judging by Clarkson's Twitter feed, it seems Colorado may be on the cards for an American episode.

The last series offered local fans the chance to watch the show live, by entering an online lottery for tickets to their filming sessions in Whitby, Lapland, Rotterdam and Loch Ness. It's likely that viewers will be given the same opportunity for the second season, but no competition details have yet been announced.

Will we see Richard Hammond's motorcycle crash?

In 2006, Richard Hammond was hospitalised following a major car crash while filming Top Gear. This year, while shooting in Mozambique for the new season of The Grand Tour, ill fortune struck again: the presenter – affectionately known by his fans as "the hamster" – was injured in a motorcycle accident. "He really did hurt himself quite badly," Clarkson told The Sun in March, but Hammond has since underplayed the incident.

In a post on social media site DriveTribe, he wrote: "I've checked and I'm not dead. It's true, I did fall off a motorbike whilst filming recently for The Grand Tour in Mozambique.

"I banged my head, yes, along with pretty much everything else apart from my left thumb, which remains un-bruised. Can't tell you more yet about the how and why of it; that's all for later in the year on the show.

"As for injuries; well put it this way, I don't think I can get a book out of it," he concluded, in a cheeky reference to his 2008 memoir On the Edge: My Story.

It's possible that we may see footage of the accident – or at a sorely bruised Hammond – in the new series. If so, it wouldn't be the first time that a Grand Tour has appeared looking the worse for wear; James May broke his arm after he fell over while filming the first series, and was ruthlessly teased about it by his co-presenters.

What else could we see in season 2?

A few early images  from the second series have been revealed, including a picture which appears to show Richard Hammond doing doughnuts in a military vehicle, as well as a picture of the presenters stuck in deep mud on a rural road in Mozambique.

The new pictures offer a tantalising glimpse of the new series, but at the moment little has been revealed about what to expect in each episode.

However, fans will already have a list of features they will be hoping not to see. The "Celebrity Brain Crash" skit that appeared throughout the first series (in which a different A-lister was sent to their death each week) was wearing thin by the third episode, and should be quietly retired.

But another regular segment, "Conversation Street" (a slightly tweaked version of Top Gear's "The News"), looks like it will be making a comeback. In the first episode of season one, Clarkson joked that the team had already recorded enough animated jingles for the section to last them through the next three years. 

Will it be better than Matt LeBlanc's Top Gear? 

Although the first series of the rebooted post-Clarkson Top Gear was generally considered a disaster (with a former Stig piping up to call it "really, really bad"), things have looked up for the BBC series since new presenter Matt LeBlanc shrugged off his co-host Chris Evans.

According to Telegraph TV critic Ed Power, the current series of Top Gear has stormed ahead of Amazon's effort. "With endless resources at its disposal, The Grand Tour has ended up a bit of an overcooked muddle," he wrote, adding that when the two shows are compared the winner is "surely Top Gear by a tail-fin". Will Clarkson and Co be able to rein in the "muddle" with a sleeker second series? Only time will tell.

How many episodes will there be?

When The Grand Tour was commissioned, Amazon signed a contract for 36 episodes across three years. The first season's had 13 episodes, but if the bumper two-part Christmas special The Beach (Buggy) Boys only counted as one, this would mean there are 24 left to come – or 12 per series for the next two seasons.