Richard Hammond may have narrowly escaped death in a huge car crash (yes, another one), but Jeremy Clarkson has revealed he thought his co-presenter hadn't been so lucky during filming of The Grand Tour.
Clarkson, who was at the same shoot with co-presenter James May when the accident happened, said his “legs turned to jelly” when he heard about the incident at the Hemburg Hill Climb in Switzerland.
In a post on DriveTribe, Clarkson explained that he originally thought that a test driver had crashed in a different car – and that he didn’t realise the extent of the accident. He described arriving at the scene, witnessing "an inferno raging, maybe a quarter of a mile away, at the bottom of a hill."
He continued: “And as I stood there, waiting for news, it dawned on me that the burning car was not yellow, as the Aventador [the test driver’s car] was. It was white. Hammond’s Rimac had been white. And I can feel it now; the coldness. My knees turning to jelly. It was Hammond who’d crashed.
“I was joined at this point by James who’d arrived on the scene just before me in his Honda NSX. He was in a right old state, his arms waving frantically, his eyes wide. ‘Hammond’s in there,’ he was screaming.
“Then came news from a nearby marshal that he wasn’t. That he’d got out before the fire started. And that 'his body' – that's what they said – was behind a screen at the bottom of the hill.”
Clarkson went on to say he was reluctant to see Hammond “after a crash that big”, but found out his co-star was okay when a security guard said the injured presenter had winked at him.
Fortunately, Hammond was alright, revealing yesterday “I’m not dead,” although after surgery he’ll be left with a “swiss army knee”.
James May has since joked: "Far from being dead, he'll actually come home slightly improved over the Brummie original."
