When Richard Hammond’s daughter hurtled a Formula E car into a wall earlier this year, the collision inevitably drew headlines given her dad’s track record of serious car crashes.
Izzy, 25, emerged onto the Jeddah circuit unscathed, but Hammond, 56, came terrifyingly close to death after crashing a jet car at almost 300mph while filming Top Gear in 2006.
‘It’s a little uncomfortable because I know from personal experience that things can and do go wrong,’ he admitted to the Metro when asked about seeing his daughter exercise her own taste for the fast lane.
‘I’m a father, like any other father. I don’t want to see my little girl hurt, but I don’t want to hold her back from opportunities that present themselves. She’s carving her own career, so I can sit back and watch her do that and only applaud.’
Hammond’s 2006 car crash is pertinent to his hotly anticipated return to The Grand Tour, alongside Jeremy Clarkson and James May, after they handed the keys to a new trio of whippersnappers.
Amazon Prime Video has shared a raft of details about the upcoming season; Hammond will feature on a Wales jaunt to test out the mettle of cars, since he ‘knows a thing or two about crashing’.
Whether he approved such verbiage about his near-fatal car crash, I can’t say, because the show’s former presenter doesn’t appear that keen to talk about the cameo. His answers certainly become far more concise.
‘We might pass through fleetingly, yes,’ he says of the cameo. Naturally, I press. Anything else he could share? ‘No I’d be shot immediately. I’d be dead. I can’t be talking about that.’
Not what you want to hear in an interview where you had hoped for some insight on the upcoming season. He does wish the new hosts – James Engelsman, Thomas Holland and Francis Bourgeois – ‘the very best with it’, which he reiterates three times.
‘We had our time with it. That’s great. That was our Grand Tour, but The Grand Tour can go on with other people doing it, and I wish them all the very best with it. Of course, I do,’ he says.
We move on to matters Hammond appears more excited to talk about, like what he would say if asked to make more Total Wipeout, after the success of similar reboots like Gladiators.
‘I probably would,’ he says. ‘I loved it. I enjoyed the singular lack of ambition of the show. It never wanted to be anything more than entertaining on a Saturday evening. If people wanted to go and do it, then good luck to him.’
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web
browser that
supports HTML5
video
There’s also the matter of that other show Hammond hosted once upon a time. We’re speaking before the rumours that Jimmy Carr could helm a reboot of Top Gear, so no word on that, but he’s keen for the show to be back on the air.
‘People don’t know what’s going on. I regularly talk to people in pubs now, and they’ve never heard of synthetic fuels,’ he says, going on to list other car components which, I’ll admit, I also have not heard of.
