Hammond cheats death again in horrific smash
FORMER Top Gear star Richard Hammond has again cheated death, surviving a horrific car accident in the Swiss mountains.
Hammond, 47, was filming his Amazon TV show, The Grand Tour, when his electric supercar left a mountain road in St Gallen in north-eastern Switzerland and burst into flames.
He was airlifted to hospital but tests showed he had escaped the high-speed crash and ensuing fireball with a fractured knee.
Jeremy Clarkson, co-star and another former Top Gear presenter, tweeted about the latest accident: “It was the biggest crash I have ever seen and the most frightening but, incredibly and thankfully, Richard seems to be mostly okay.’’
Photographs showed a burned-out wreck of a car resting on its roof.
Hammond was critically injured in a high-speed crash in 2006 that left him in a coma for several weeks.
He recovered and went on to build an international following with Top Gear before following Clarkson when he was sacked from the show in 2015.
The accident is thought to have happened on Saturday afternoon. St Gallen police spokesman Gian Andrea Rezzoli told Swiss newspaper 20 Minuten the driver of the car was taken by air ambulance to hospital and the fire was extinguished by firefighters.
Hammond was conscious and got himself out of the car before it was engulfed in flames.
The Grand Tour confirmed Hammond was completing the Hemburg Hill Climb in Switzerland in a Romac Concept One, an electric supercar built in Croatia, when the accident happened.
“Richard was conscious and talking and climbed out of the vehicle himself before it burst into flames,’’ the show’s producers said.