Top Gear star in fireball horror car crash
FORMER Top Gear star Richard Hammond cheated death yesterday after a dramatic high-speed car crash in Switzerland.
Horrifying footage captured the moment the daredevil TV presenter’s £2m electric supercar swerved off a road before rolling down a hill and bursting into flames during filming for his TV show The Grand Tour 2.
Incredibly, Hammond, 47, was able to pull himself from the wreckage before the car caught fire. He was airlifted to hospital with a fractured knee.
It is the second time Hammond has escaped from a terrifying crash. He was in a coma for two weeks in 2006 after the car he was driving for Top Gear at 464km/h suffered a burst tyre.
Of yesterday’s accident, co-presenter Jeremy Clarkson tweeted: ‘It was the biggest crash I’ve ever seen and the most frightening but incredibly, and thankfully, Richard seems to be mostly OK.’ In March, after being knocked out in a motorbike accident while filming in Africa, the star swore never to take part in any more dangerous stunts for the sake of his ‘beautiful’ family.
The father of two was driving the white Rimac supercar in the village of St Gallen in northern Switzerland for his Amazon Prime show when the accident happened. Photographs from the scene showed the flipped car in flames by the side of a road before the blaze was extinguished by firefighters.
Confirming that Hammond suffered a fractured knee, hospital sources said: ‘He is going to be OK.’ A Grand Tour spokesman’ said the cause of the crash is unknown and is ‘being investigated’.