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Richard Hammond has opened up about how his injuries from hisTop Gear car crash still affect his health today.
In 2016, Hammond was driving a jet-powered dragster at 319mph on the motoring show when a tyre burst at 319mph, causing him to career out of control and land upside down in a field.
He was left in a coma for two weeks and suffered serious head injuries, including a frontal lobe brain injury. But in 2022, he got back behind the wheel of the very same car.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Hammond reflected on how he thinks his frontal lobe brain injury has already started to affect his memory at 54.
“It did have a knock-on effect. I’ve discussed it since with my family. I’m 54 and my memory’s getting shaky,” he said.
Hammond said that he has no recollection of the immediate events after the 2006 incident, but he was told he tried to do a “piece to camera afterwards”.
Still, though, Hammond said he can still see a more positive side to the crash, remarking that the crash boosted their Top Gear viewing figures early on in the show’s run.
“It helped humanise us beyond being car reporters,” he said.
Hammond reflected on the car crash earlier this year when discussing former England cricket captain Freddie Flintoff’s injuries sustained after a crash while filming Top Gear in December 2022.
Speaking about his experience, Hammond told Times Radio that his own crash was something he feels “nobody” could have stopped from happening.
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He continued: “But everything that followed from there was great. They had the right contacts in place. They did things in the right order. They got an air ambulance there. Everything was done properly. And that’s all you can ultimately do, isn’t it?”
Hammond’s comments come after Jeremy Clarkson announced that he has ended his long-term presenting partnership with Hammond and James May.
The trio started working together on BBC’s Top Gear in 2002 and moved over to Amazon for Prime Video series The Grand Tour, which premiered in 2021 – but now it’s been announced that The Grand Tour won’t be returning.
Clarkson wrote in The Sunday Times that he is “packing in” his work as a car presenter and focusing his energy elsewhere – presumably his Amazon series Clarkson’s Farm and his newly-opened pub, The Farmer’s Dog.
“After 36 years of talking about cars on television, I’m packing it in, because I’m too old and fat to get into the cars that I like and not interested in driving those I don’t,” Clarkson said.
“What this means of course is that my 22-year partnership with James May and Richard Hammond is now over. You can see our final road trip together on Amazon Prime very soon. It’s emotional.”
Earlier this year, it was reported that Clarkson, Hammond and May had dissolved their production company, declaring solvency and appointing a liquidator to “wind up” their business.
The final Grand Tour episode will air on Prime Video on 13 September.
