The Grand Tour’s Richard Hammond teases “surprise” in Sand Job
Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May headed to Mauritania for their penultimate special.
On February 16th, Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May's penultimate Grand Tour special will come to Amazon Prime Video.
Titled The Grand Tour: Sand Job, the episode will see the trio travelling to the remote African country, where they follow in the footsteps of the Paris-Dakar rally. Only there's one, slight difference: they'll be using cheap modified sports cars instead of bespoke Dakar racers to complete their journey.
But that's not the only surprise that came with filming this season, Richard tells us.
Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com ahead of the launch, Hammond revealed: "There was there was a surprise arrival in [the] minefield, because it's [Mauritania] still on the red list in terms of travel, and the last thing you want in or near a minefield is a surprise.
'There was a scary encounter with some Ebola carrying bats. My car, the Aston Martin, was the troublesome one of the bunch because it comes from an era when cars were just becoming intelligent... and that gave me no end prompt. Plus, the guys just destroyed me as well. There was quite a bit of pranking."
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The episode comes after the news that Jeremy Clarkson has made the decision to quit the series, admitting he's "done everything you can do" when it comes to cars.
For the final special, the boys will head to Zimbabwe, and the episode is expected to air later this year.
Asked how they made Sand Job even more spectacular given that it's their second to last episode, Hammond continued: "We always try our best to do the best we can wherever we are.
"I think what was joyous about Mauritania was we made a few specials during lockdown, but obviously we were limited... we were really pleased with the shows that we made. We went to Scotland, we went as far as we could.
"I suppose for those specials, because we had to take out the exotic, far flung natures, we didn't have the challenging landscapes. It was almost The Grand Tour unplugged, so we stripped it right back and we majored on the relationship between the three of us, and the arguing and the breaking and we just had a laugh."
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He added: "We really enjoyed doing those because of we sort of reconnected on TV, so we could carry that into this special, but what we could also do is that we were back doing what we've done for so long, which has been somewhere remote with hostile terrain, somewhere where people probably haven't been and let our incredibly creative and skilled production team to go and capture the place.
"So that's what we focused on: getting back to the the majesty and splendour of travelling the world albeit doing stupid things."
The Grand Tour: Sand Job launches globally on 16th February on Prime Video. Try Amazon Prime Video for free for 30 days. Plus, read our guides to the best Amazon Prime series and the best movies on Amazon Prime.
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