Jeremy Clarkson’s "knees turned to jelly" when he realised his friend Richard Hammond had crashed his car while filming for ‘The Grand Tour’ over the weekend.
The 57-year-old presenter was convinced his co-star had died after he witnessed the £2 million electric super car he was racing in around a Swiss mountain burst into flames after he careered off a hillside while travelling at 120mph.
Writing for Drivetribe Jeremy explained: "I saw a plume of smoke. Fearful that the ‘off’ may be quite serious, I urged the driver to get to the top of the hill as quickly as possible. I arrived maybe 30 seconds later and leaped out to see an inferno raging, maybe a quarter of a mile away, at the bottom of a hill.
"And as I stood there, 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. It was Hammond who’d crashed. I was joined at this point by James [May]. He was in a right old state, his arms waving frantically, his eyes wide. ‘Hammond’s in there.’ He was screaming."
However, he breathed a huge sigh of relief when he was told that the 47-year-old car fanatic had managed to leap from the vehicle before it erupted into a fireball.
He said: "Then came news from a nearby marshal that he wasn’t. That he’d got out before the fire started. And that ‘his body’ – that’s what they said – was behind a screen at the bottom of the hill. 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. He wasn’t going to be a pretty sight, that’s for sure.
"Our security man is made of sterner stuff and set off down the hill like a racing goat. I watched him arrive at the scene. I watched him intently. I saw him lift his walky talky and I heard him say ‘It’s all right fellas. He winked at me.’ "
Despite the seriousness of the crash, Richard managed to escape with a broken leg.
After he was airlifted to hospital, the journalist – who previously suffered brain injuries and almost died after an accident in 2006, and was involved in a motorbike crash earlier this year – was keen to call his wife Mindy and daughters Izzy, 16, and Willow, 13, to let them know he was OK.
Jeremy Clarkson’s ‘knees turned to jelly’ after fireball crash
