DOUBLE JEOPARDY
HHow ttwo ‘ Grand Tour’ stars cheated death
IT’S a wonder that Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond are still around to talk about “The Grand Tour” — since both men nearly died while filming Season 2 of the all-things-cars series, premiering Friday on Amazon.
Hammond, 47, had to be airlifted to a hospital in Switzerland last June after the Croatian-built Rimac Concept One electric car he was test-driving, on the final filming run of the day, flew off the road, rolled 300 feet down a hill and caught fire — shattering Hammond’s tibia and breaking several of his ribs. Three months earlier, in Mozambique, Hammond fell off a motorbike and hit his head.
Then, in August, Clarkson, 57, was hospitalized with double pneumonia while in Majorca, Spain on a family vacation — which postponed shooting on “The Grand Tour” Christmas special. (It will be filmed next month in Colombia. Better late than never.)
“I had a tibial plateau fracture, which is a particularly nasty break,” says Hammond. “I’ve got a plate and 10 pins in there now and I’ll need a new knee. The downside of it is I’m not allowed to run anymore and I was a keen runner. I’m 47 and I don’t want to get fat. But it could’ve been a helluva lot worse.
“The car just got away from me,” he says. “I landed upside-down and was struggling to get out. I had a crash helmet on and was all squashed up against the roof. I figured, ‘Someone will get me out, I’m not going to worry,’ but then I heard the burning and I struggled to get out. The medics arrived, strapped me to a board and I phoned my wife and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got a broken leg and some broken ribs.’ ”
Clarkson, who tweeted out a photo of his ID bracelet while in the hospital, says he’s “made of wood and stone” and spent a few weeks recuperating on a friend’s boat. “It was nasty while it lasted,” he says of his illness. “Double pneumonia is not very nice. The only thing I couldn’t do was fly, but it was no hardship to be in Majorca. I was in the hospital the day we were supposed to be leaving [to shoot the Christmas special]. It was huge thing to put the brakes on that. We just had a run of bad luck this year in terms of all getting old and falling to pieces.”
Season 2 of “The Grand Tour” will see Hammond, Clarkson and James May driving cars around the world — Croatia, Mozambique, Dubai, Colorado, Switzerland, Spain — and even in New York City. In that episode, Clarkson, driving a Ford GT —“it’s remarkable and fast and beautiful,” he says — challenges Hammond and May, using subways, trains, planes and buses, to see who can reach Niagara Falls first.
“Driving the Ford [in Midtown] was challenging, put it that way, and was very uncomfortable,” Clarkson says. “But it looked good in the concrete canyons.”
Hammond, who’s been working with Clarkson and May since their days on the BBC’s “Top Gear” (2003-2015), says the trio’s familiarity is a drawing card for the show’s fans.
“A lot of people are watching because of the banter between us ... it’s a really joyful thing for people to feel a part of that,” he says. “I never feel like we’re broadcasting to a million people in one go — it’s like we’re broadcasting to one person.”
“We have the same freedom to say what we want and go where we want,” says Clarkson. “There was nothing particularly broken about what we did in the past [on ‘Top Gear’]. It would’ve been a shame to throw the baby out with the bath water.”