Firing up Freddie:
Former England all-rounder and Top Gear presenter Freddie Flintoff drives a classic car as he tries to rekindle the excitement he lost after retiring from top-level cricket. James Rampton reports.
How a vintage
Jaguar gave Top Gear presenter what he needed.
Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff is one of the finest all-rounders ever to have played cricket.
Now 42, the former Lancashire player starred in 79 tests and 141 one-day internationals for England, and he confesses that nothing he has done since has lived up to the excitement he felt as a cricketer.
Flintoff concedes that, “This will sound quite strange, but in all the things I have done since retirement – and I have done some daft stuff – from an adrenalin point of view nothing has ever come close to going out to bat for England or Lancashire. I think for a while I was trying to find that again and recreate it, but I couldn’t find it in boxing or in doing a load of extreme sports.”
However, the sportsman turned TV presenter reveals that some of the stunts he tried in the new series of Top Gear came close to matching the highs he experienced on the cricket field.
Flintoff, who co-presents Top Gear with comedian Paddy McGuinness and motoring journalist Chris Harris, derived a particular buzz from driving a vintage Jaguar XJ220 down the runway at Elvington Airfield in Yorkshire at speeds of up to 320kmh.
He recollects his excitement on the day.
“I remember that car coming out when I was a kid in the late 1980s, early 90s, and it was like nothing I’d seen in my life before – to say nothing of the amount of money it cost. Next minute, I’m 42 and I’m sat in it trying to drive it at 200mph.”
This was the moment Flintoff got a huge adrenalin surge.
“I’d never driven a car like that
before. Driving a 30-year-old supercar is so different to driving one of the new ones. I’ve been up to 180, 190mph before, but in that car it was completely different.
“It is an old vehicle, it is all over the place. You can hear it rattling, you feel every bump, and then you have got to stop it. After I had finished, the adrenalin was definitely going. That is something I really enjoy and always search for.
“I had a weird sense of achievement having driven that car that fast. Quite pathetically, I was happy with myself at the end of it.”
Flintoff tries several other adrenalin-rush activities in the new series of Top Gear. He tackles a giant carnival-inspired Wall Of Death in an old insurance write-off at an empty Alexandra Palace in London, he hurtles down a ski slope in Cyprus in a holiday hire car, and he spends 24 hours in Bolton in a Volvo S60 Hybrid.
The stunt that gave him perhaps the most child-like delight, though, was speeding around a deserted theme park called Alton Towers in Staffordshire. Flintoff describes that day as, “Another highlight”.
He felt very much at home at Alton Towers because, “It is somewhere I had been as a kid and somewhere I took my kids.
“Because of lockdown, everything at Alton Towers was closed and empty. We got the chance to take electric cars and race around there. I had an electric Mini, Paddy had a Corsa, and Chris had a Honda.” He continues that, “It was a race to get out of Alton Towers. They had blocked off entrances and you had to find your way round. It was quite surreal racing past all the rides like The Smiler and all those places you have been with your kids. “It was a really good day out – driving the cars round was even better than going on all the rides.” A man who is clearly always seeking the next thrill, Flintoff adds with a laugh that during the race at Alton Towers, “I did get a bit carried away and almost ended up in some vending machines, but I managed to get myself out of it.” Flintoff underscores what he loves about working on Top Gear. “Going to places in this country and abroad that you’d never get the chance to go to usually,” he says. “You get just so many opportunities to see and do things – and have a laugh doing them as well. “It’s a far cry from playing cricket.”
“It is an old vehicle, it is all over the place. You can hear it rattling, you feel every bump.” – Freddie Flintoff