Clarkson: I thought Hammond was dead
JEREMY CLARKSON said he “genuinely thought” co-presenter Richard Hammond had died in a car crash while filming The Grand Tour after he was referred to as a “body”.
Hammond, 47, was driving an electric Rimac supercar that crashed and burst into flames during filming on Saturday in St Gallen, Switzerland, for the Amazon Prime television series.
He climbed from the overturned wreck just before it erupted in flames and suffered a broken knee, for which he will need surgery.
But Clarkson, writing online for Drivetribe, said his own knees turned to “jelly” when he realised it was Hammond’s car that had crashed.
He said: “I don’t know what went wrong. Hopefully, when he comes out of surgery and is feeling up to it, he will be able to tell us. What I do know is that I genuinely thought he was dead.”
Clarkson said he had finished filming and was waiting for Hammond and fellow presenter James May to complete the hill climb when he heard a test driver had had an “off ” in one of the cars. “Waiting for news, it dawned on me that the burning car was not yellow, as the Aventador was. It was white. Hammond’s Rimac had been white. And I can feel it now; the coldness. My knees turning to jelly.
“I was joined at this point by James [May] who’d arrived on the scene just before me in his Honda NSX. He was in a right old state, his arms waving frantically, his eyes wide. ‘Hammond’s in there,’ he was screaming.”
Clarkson said news then came from a marshal that Hammond had got out before the fire but “his body” was behind a screen. “I could see the screen. I could see the paramedics behind it. I couldn’t see Hammond. I didn’t want to see him. Not after a crash that big.”