Magazine publishes Hammond crash photos
The first pictures of the dramatic crash that nearly cost Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond his life have been published.
Hammond had a miraculous escape when he crashed a jet-powered dragster at 288mph while filming a stunt for the programme in September.
The photographs, featured in the new issue of Top Gear magazine, show a tyre bursting before the dragster skids and then flips over.
Although Hammond has little recollection of the crash, he has tried to imagine what happened.
He said: “I will have taken a few deep breaths on the start line as the engine roared and my thumb hovered over the afterburner switch.
“Then I will have hit it and 10,000 horsepower will have hurled me towards the horizon and up to 280mph. The rest is, I’m afraid, history.”
Hammond suffered brain injuries when he crashed the Vampire jet car at Elvington airfield in York in September as he attempted to break the British land speed record.
The father of two left hospital just five weeks after the high-speed accident and is said to be making a full recovery.
Video footage of the crash will be broadcast in the first episode of the new series of Top Gear on January 28, according to Top Gear magazine.
