Former Top Gear star Richard Hammond has apologised to his wife and daughters from his hospital bed a day after his horror crash in Switzerland.
Hammond explained his injuries and thanked former Top Gear presenter James May for ‘sneaking gin in’ to the hospital for him in a lighthearted video on Drivetribe from his Swiss hospital bed on Sunday.
The 47 year old TV presenter, who sustained brain injuries after a 288mph rocket car accident in 2006, was airlifted to hospital after flipping a £2million electric supercar which then burst into flames as he filmed his new Amazon show The Grand Tour.
But he miraculously escaped the fireball horror on Saturday with little more than a fractured knee and was ‘conscious and talking’ after freeing himself from the vehicle.
‘Yes, it’s true – I binned it. Again. I’m here, in a hopsital in Switzerland, this is my knee, that they’re going to turn from this into this,’ he said in a video, filmed by May, from the hospital as he showed off X-Rays of his knee.
‘They’re giving me a Swiss Army knee hopefully later today,’ he added. I’d like to thank all of the medical professionals who got me by air ambulance from the crash to this hospital and dealt with me every since.
‘I’d like to say thank you as well to James May, who smuggled gin in for me last night. I shouldn’t have said that out loud.
‘And most importantly, sorry to my wife, Mindy, and my daughters, Izzy and Willow. I’m sorry for being such a colossal idiot. More news later!’
Hammond’s Grand Tour colleague May was seen walking into a St Gallen hospital as he visited Hammond in the hours after the crash.
May and and fellow colleague Jeremy Clarkson were ‘staggered’ he survived because there was ‘nothing left’ of the vehicle
Pictures from the scene showed the Rimac Concept One car in flames alongside a road in St. Gallen before the blaze was extinguished by firefighters.
Grand Tour producer Amazon later released images showing the burnt-out wreckage of the car laying upside down on a hill.
The crash is reported to have happened on a road that was closed for the Bergrennen Hemberg race.
A spokesperson for The Grand Tour said: ‘Richard Hammond was involved in a serious crash after completing the Hemburg Hill Climb in Switzerland in a Rimac Concept One, an electric super car built in Croatia, during filming for The Grand Tour Season 2 on Amazon Prime, but very fortunately suffered no serious injury
‘Richard was conscious and talking, and climbed out of the car himself before the vehicle burst into flames.
‘He was flown by Air Ambulance to hospital in St Gallen to be checked over revealing a fracture to his knee.
‘Nobody else was in the car or involved in the accident, and we’d like to thank the paramedics on site for their swift response.
‘The cause of the crash is unknown and is being investigated.’
Grand Tour co-star Jeremy Clarkson tweeted: ‘It was the biggest crash I’ve ever seen and the most frightening but incredibly, and thankfully, Richard seems to be mostly OK.’
A source told The Sun: ‘The crash was really bad. The car completely flipped and then burst into flames.
Source: Dailymail UK