Friends do get anxious in the car since my 320mph crash
FORMER Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond has admitted some of his friends worry about getting in a car with him years after the crash that nearly killed him.
The star was left in a coma after the accident driving a jet-powered dragster called Vampire which is said to have been doing 320mph on Top Gear in 2006. Richard, 54, said of his pals: “Some of them get anxious. What’s worse is when somebody else is driving and I’m in the car because it tends to go one of two ways.
“Either they demonstrate ‘I’m not going to mess about, I’m just going to drive normally’ or ‘Wahey, here we go!’ and they overcook it. That can get alarming.”
Richard – nicknamed Hamster – said his wife Mindy kept cuttings from the incident at York’s Elvington airfield and he’s annoyed it still gets reported he was doing 280mph when it was faster.
He moaned: “It’s the biggest I’ll ever be and I never saw any of it.The papers, when they used to talk about it a lot, they mention ‘he was doing 280mph’ and I was not! It was 320. Come on – it was the fastest crash on British soil!”
He told The Paul Chowdhry Pudcast it had not made him scared of death. He said: “I’m genuinely not. The manner of its delivery is of concern, obviously.”
He added that his mid-term memory was not good “but that might be because I’m 54.And they call it ‘lost key syndrome’ when you’re recovering from brain injury”. Richard has been a favourite with petrolheads since appearing on Top Gear from 2002 until 2015 with Jeremy Clarkson and James May.
He and James stayed loyal to Jeremy when he was axed over a bust-up with a producer and the trio fronted Amazon Prime’s The Grand Tour until this year.
Reports have suggested it may continue without the trio.Asked if a return to the currently off-screen Top Gear was possible, he said: “I don’t know. I have no doubt Top Gear will come back one day. Somebody will pick it up and run with it. It’ll be a different show.”