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The BBC has confirmed that the Cenotaph will not feature in an upcoming episode of Top Gear.
Images published in the press this morning showed one of the show's host's Matt LeBlanc and driver Ken Block appearing to drive "donuts" near the war memorial in London's Whitehall.
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Main show presenter Chris Evans apologised on his BBC Radio 2 breakfast show this morning, later saying that he did not think the footage would appear in the show.
The BBC has now issued a statement confirming that the memorial will not be seen in the episode - adding that it was never intended to be pictured in the film.
"Top Gear has been on location around central London over the past few days," the statement read.
"Ahead of filming, the production team worked closely with the Metropolitan Police Film Unit and the Special Events Unit of Westminster Council.
"This was a large-scale, complex shoot, prepared over a period of four months, which required numerous road closures, health and safety regulations to be in place, and also included full disclosure to local residents, including the Treasury and Foreign Office."
It continued: "The Cenotaph was at no point intended to feature in the programme and therefore will not appear in the final film.
"However, we are acutely aware of how some of the images in the press look today via the angle and distance they were taken and for which, as Chris Evans has already said, we sincerely apologise.
"The driver of the car was briefed by production prior to filming as to where to drive and to not do any manoeuvres close to the monument, an instruction to which he fully adhered.
"We would like to make it absolutely clear that the Top Gear team has the utmost respect for the Cenotaph, what it stands for, and those heroic individuals whose memory it serves so fittingly."
The new Top Gear has had a troubled start since Chris Evans was first announced as a replacement host for Jeremy Clarkson, whose contract was not renewed after he verbally and physically attacked a show producer.
The photoshopped first image of the new presenter lineup was ruthlessly mocked on social media, while some took issue with the female symbol on Sabine Schmitz's - the sole woman's - T-shirt.
Some media outlets dug up a 2012 picture of presenter Rory Reid at a clay pigeon shooting team building exercise, prompting him to explain that it wasn't exactly "gangster".
The BBC has dismissed reports of Evans's apparent "difficult" behaviour on set.
It had been claimed that Evans's behaviour had prompted executive producer Lisa Clark to leave the show, and that he was against LeBlanc being hired as his co-presenter.
Despite Evans publicly revealing a May 8 launch date for the show, the BBC later maintained that no official premiere date had been set, adding to us that "filming on Top Gear continues as planned and on schedule".
The broadcaster even had to respond to a complete "nonsense" story that Evans was struggling to talk and drive at the same time, telling Digital Spy that in fact producers had been "blown away" by just how good at doing that he was.
Meanwhile, the show had the indignity of being the subject of a painfully forced tweet from the Chancellor George Osborne, who "quipped" that a noisy shoot for the show was interfering with his writing the Budget.
