Richard Hammond has spoken publicly for the first time since the horror car crash in which he was lucky to escape with little more than a fractured knee, admitting that he thought he was going to die.

The 48 year old presenter was filming the second series of ‘The Grand Tour’, the Amazon Prime series he started with his former ‘Top Gear’ colleagues Jeremy Clarkson and James May, in Switzerland earlier this month when the accident occurred. His Rimac Concept One, an electric supercar, left the road and hurtled 100 metres down a hill, narrowly avoiding hitting a house in the process.

Richard HammondRichard Hammond with his wife Amanda Etheridge

“I was aware that I was up high, and that inevitably the car was going to come down,” Hammond told motoring fan site Drive Tribe on Wednesday (June 28th). “And yeah of course there was a moment of dread - 'Oh God, I'm going to die’.

“Also I was aware that the car was taking just such a beating. I mean if you look at those craters, that's a big hole that's just impact and it looks like the thing has been dropped from space to leave a hole that big.”

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“So yeah I was probably going 'well this is it'. In fact, that is what was going through my mind. I thought 'I've had it’.”

About a week after the crash, Jeremy Clarkson wrote an eye-witness account of the accident for the same website, revealing that he “genuinely thought” that Hammond had died when he saw the crash for the first time. He also revealed that filming for the second series of ‘The Grand Tour’ could well be delayed as a result of the accident.

A spokesperson for ‘The Grand Tour’ said: “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.”

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