The Grand Tour season 2: Jeremy Clarkson and James May poke fun at Richard Hammond’s crash after terrifying footage is shown
James May, Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond are back (Picture: Amazon) Jeremy Clarkson and James ..
Jeremy Clarkson and James May opened the second season of The Grand Tour by directly tackling Richard Hammond’s life-threatening crash earlier this year.
The 47-year-old presenter was involved in a car crash back in June while filming for the new series, after a £2 million supercar tumbled down a slope in the Swiss Alps, leaving him badly shaken with a fractured knee.
It became Hammond’s second serious motoring accident after a previous crash in 2006, which left him in a coma for two weeks, battling depression, paranoia and memory loss as a result of his head injuries.
As a pretty huge elephant in the room, the second season of The Grand Tour wasted no time in addressing the incident, by using it as fuel for the trio’s banter throughout the episode.
After a short setup explaining their experiment between a petrol, hybrid and full electric car (past, present and future), Hammond explained how his car was an electric supercar made in Croatia.
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Taking a jibe at his car choice as they cut to the pre-recorded footage, Jeremy Clarkson says: ‘We know how that goes.’
Spacing out clips from the challenge throughout the episode, Hammond’s terrifying incident is shown in brutal fashion; broadcasting the exact moment Hammond’s car veers off the cliff and showing the burning wreckage as he’s carried out on a stretcher.
It’s both startling and horrifically bleak; a stark contrast to the macho bravado which drives the show’s spirit while acting as a worthwhile reminder of how close to death Hammond really was.
This tension however is punctured perfectly as they cut back to the studio, where Jeremy Clarkson and James May simply ignore the horrific scenes, with the latter saying: ‘Right, I have the times here..’
As the studio audience chuckled, the pair soon let rip with jibes about the incident, with Clarkson saying: ‘When was the last time you didn’t go home in an air ambulance?’
Teasing him about the electric car, Clarkson added: ‘The future is quiet, but a bit burny.’
Hammond eventually gets a word in though, saying: ‘I don’t know how that happened.
‘I was alright,’ he added to cheers from the crowd.
It was also revealed how the burning wreckage continued to be on fire five days after the crash initially happened, due to thermal runaways causing a continuous stream of combustion within the engine.
Hammond wasn’t the only one mocked for his hospitalisation however, with Jeremy also receiving a ribbing after suffering with pneumonia earlier this year too.
‘You’re mocking the afflicted,’ Jeremy joked.
You can catch The Grand Tour season two on Amazon Prime Video.
MORE: Richard Hammond ‘entirely rejects’ claims he is ‘anti-gay’ after remarks over ‘coming out’
