Top Gear star says he warned BBC someone could be killed before Freddie Flintoff crash

The BBC later announced it would be cancelling Top Gear "for the foreseeable future", and hosts Paddy McGuinness and Chris Harris are instead reuniting for a new series.

Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience, Harris spoke about the crash, explaining: "He wasn't wearing a crash helmet. And if you do that, even at 25, 30 miles an hour, the injuries that you sustain are profound.

"I was there on the day, I was the only presenter with Fred that day. I wasn't actually right by him, but I was close by.

"I remember the radio message that I heard. I always used to have a radio in my little room at the test track where I was sitting inside, so I could hear what was going on.

"And I heard someone say there has been a real accident here, the car’s upside down. So I ran to the window, looked out and he wasn't moving, so I thought he was dead. I assumed he was, then he moved.

"He’s a physical specimen, Fred, he's a big guy, six foot five, six foot six, strong. And if he wasn't so strong, he wouldn't have survived."

Harris explained that the Morgan three-wheeler which Flintoff was driving is a "very difficult car", and that only two people at the set that day had driven one before - himself, and another pro driver.

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He said he would usually speak with Flintoff about any particularly difficult stunts or drives on the show because of his automotive experience, but that "because of the call times that day, that was the first time we'd never had the chance to talk about how he might approach a difficult vehicle".

"I find that very difficult to live with," he said, "and I feel partly responsible because I didn't get the chance to talk to him."

Harris continued: "I had seen this coming. There was a big inquiry, a lot of soul-searching, the BBC is good at that.

"But what was never spoken about was that three months before the accident, I'd gone to the BBC and said, 'Unless you change something, someone's going to die on this show.'

"So I went to them, I went to the BBC and I told them of my concerns from what I'd seen. As the most experienced driver on the show by a mile, I said, 'If we carry on, at the very least we're gonna have a serious injury, at the very worst we're gonna have [a] fatality.'"

Harris said that he felt Top Gear was in an "arms race" to do bigger and bigger stunts with The Grand Tour, and that "all too often, in the last year I saw situations where it got too dangerous".

He continued: "What's really killed me is that no one's ever really acknowledged the fact that I called it beforehand. It's very difficult to live with that initially, for me.

"When I knew, I thought I'd done the right thing. I'm not very good at that, I normally just go with the flow, but I saw this coming.

"I thought I did the right thing, I went to the BBC and I found out really that no one had taken me very seriously. I did a bit of digging afterwards. The conversation I had with those people was sort of acknowledged. Then they tried to sort of shut me down a bit, and then they didn't look after me at all.

"They just sort of left me to rot. And even now, I'm totally perplexed by the whole thing. To actually say to an organisation, this is going to go wrong, and then be there the day that it goes wrong is a position I never expected to be in, and I never want to be in again.

"It's strange, and pretty heartbreaking in many ways. I loved that show."

RadioTimes.com has approached the BBC for comment.

A previous statement shared by BBC Studios regarding a health and safety review of Top Gear last year read: "The independent Health and Safety production review of Top Gear, which looked at previous seasons, found that while BBC Studios had complied with the required BBC policies and industry best practice in making the show, there were important learnings which would need to be rigorously applied to future Top Gear UK productions.

"The report included a number of recommendations to improve approaches to safety as Top Gear is a complex programme-making environment routinely navigating tight filming schedules and ambitious editorial expectations – challenges often experienced by long-running shows with an established on and off-screen team.

"Learnings included a detailed action plan involving changes in the ways of working, such as increased clarity on roles and responsibilities and better communication between teams for any future Top Gear production."

Flintoff recently made his return to TV in the second season of his cricket show Field of Dreams.

In October, it was confirmed that Flintoff had reached a settlement with the BBC, which The Sun reported was worth £9m, based on the presenter losing out on two years of earnings.

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