RICHARD HAMMOND MARKS 20 YEARS SINCE TOP GEAR CRASH

Richard Hammond has marked 20 years since a near-fatal crash while filming Top Gear, thanking the emergency workers and medical staff who treated him. Hammond was seriously injured in September 2006 when the jet-powered Vampire dragster he was driving, travelling at more than 300mph, veered off the track at Elvington airfield near York after a front tyre blew out. He pulled a lever to release the car's parachute and tried to steer away from danger, but the vehicle overturned. Writing on Instagram, Hammond said he had been "convinced I was about to die" and recalled thinking "the next thing on my To Do list was to die," adding that he did not scream and did not find the moment frightening.

Hammond was pulled from the wreckage and airlifted to hospital, where he spent around two weeks in a coma. In his post, he named members of the Yorkshire Air Ambulance service and hospital aftercare teams who treated him, saying he owed his recovery to "the many people involved in rescuing me from the shattered car, flying me to hospital and treating me there." He said he would have missed out on career opportunities, "amazing adventures" and time with his two daughters had those workers not helped him that day. Hammond returned to Top Gear in early 2007, rejoining co-hosts Jeremy Clarkson and James May a few months after the crash.

Hammond said in 2023 that he believed the crash may have affected his memory. He was involved in a further serious crash in June 2017 during a practice run for an electric car race in Switzerland, when his vehicle left the road, rolled down a hillside and caught fire near a house. His Instagram post marking the anniversary did not set out any further plans or public appearances tied to the occasion.