The Top Gear Story (21 page)

Richard also admitted that on reflection going back to the show only four months after the crash was ‘much too early’. Speaking in the
Daily Mail
, he said: ‘I thought I was better when I went back to work, but now I don’t remember going back. I was really having a bloody hard time, I had to evolve new strategies for coping.’ He went on to say: ‘I damaged all the complicated bits of the brain to do with processing and emotional control. I was prey to every single emotion that swept over me and I couldn’t deal with it, I had to relearn things from scratch.’ This necessity to re-learn how to cope with life means that the majority of victims of injury to the brain find the simplest things very testing indeed.

The impact of the crash on Hammond’s life has been deep and lasting. Poignantly, he is now vice-president of UK children’s brain injury charity, The Children’s Trust. In July 2009, he met with children and staff at the opening of the charity’s state-of-the-art £7 million project in Tadworth, Surrey. The
Top Gear
presenter was escorted by thirteen-year-old Chas, who had been severely
injured in a skiing accident in 2008, and told reporters present: ‘I know only too well the challenges people face following a severe brain injury but for a child, there are extra dimensions because their brains are still developing.’

Talking about his own accident is always a mixture of seriousness and levity; it’s a tricky balance for Hammond to get right. At times, The Hamster cannot avoid making light of the situation and once joked in the
Mirror
that he was disappointed not to have any long-lasting or more dramatic scars: ‘Do you realise how annoyed I am that I’ve got no marks on me? Absolutely nothing at all, nothing for the pub! There are people who fall off their trikes at the age of four who’ve got better injuries than me. I’ve been through hell and I’ve got nothing to show for it except a chipped tooth! I’m gutted.’

And did he have any mementos from the crash? Well, not the helmet – the manufacturer asked if he’d kindly return it to them as, ‘they told me that it’s the fastest test [they’ve] ever put it through.’ He’s requested that they return it one day so that he can put it on a plinth on his office wall.

Ultimately, it was for Richard to decide when he was ready to return to
Top Gear
. Reflecting on the incident that nearly killed him and his lengthy recovery since, he is still convinced that the programme had attempted to do all the right things. His stance is that if one boy racer thinks twice about how badly cars can go wrong – even in the ultra-safe world of television – then that same speeding teenager might pull back on the pedal a little … and how could that be a bad thing?

O
ne criticism often levelled at the new version of
Top Gear
is that they tend to focus on cars that 99 per cent of the population could never afford. Initially, the old generation of the programme was very much a ‘normal’ motoring show and as such, they regularly featured ‘cars of the people’ such as Escorts, Mondeos, Metros, and so on. However, if you scan through the new
Top Gear
archives, there is a clear predominance of supercars and high performance machines being filmed and reviewed.

The obvious way that the show features these stunning machines is on the ‘Power Lap’ board. Regardless of the way a car is tested, whether it’s driving across Europe, ploughing down a snowy mountain, thundering around the Highlands or careering up a circular multi-storey, at the end of each piece the cars are usually brought back to the trusty
Top Gear
test track and handed over to the tame racing driver. Once The Stig has
thrashed a vehicle around the track, the show returns to the studio where the presenters and audience await the time with baited breath.

There are regulations for Power Lap Times on the track: the car has to be road-worthy, commercially available and able to negotiate standard speed bumps. For this reason, the laps completed by the Aston Martin BBR9 (a Le Mans car), the Ferrari FXX (slick tyres) and the Renault F1 car (it’s a Renault F1 car!) and the Caparo T1 (too low-slung) did not qualify, nor did those by the Radical SR3 and the Sea Harrier. Conversely, manufacturers (and The Stig) are allowed to alter suspensions and gear shifting to their most aggressive set-up and traction controls can be switched off. As we have seen, at the time of writing it’s perhaps not surprising that the Veyron Super Sport has the fastest lap time of 1.16.8.

In a direct response to the on-going criticism of supercar bias, Clarkson announced in Series 6 that they would therefore review the ‘cheapest’ Ferrari available, the stunning 430. As a fan of the marque, this was a shoe-in for a good review but in fact Clarkson could barely contain his joy, thrashing it around the circuit with lashings of superlatives, comparing the engine note to a symphony orchestra. A startling statistic with this car is that Ferrari claim any driver can take the new 430 around their test track only one second slower than their own test driver, such is the technological brilliance of the machine. Clarkson agreed and declared it a masterpiece, although he added that you could always sell your left leg for £3,000 if you wanted to buy the flappy paddle gear shift as you wouldn’t need a clutch foot.

My own favourite part of this exuberant review is when Clarkson points to the ‘snow and ice’ button on the steering wheel – bringing to mind the months and months of high-tech wizardry and boffin-like development injected into that safety setting and the world-leading technology it possessed – only for
him to dismiss it by saying, ‘That’s irrelevant!’ (Note: James May enjoyed the 430 so much that he went out and bought his own.)

Going back to the review of Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason’s F60, the Enzo, after all the shenanigans and fooling around with the musician’s new book, Clarkson’s review of this landmark Ferrari was superb. His hyperbole was without limit as he said he’d never known such ‘savagery’ and at one point clearly cannot think of anything clever to add, instead just relying on his emotional instinct and saying, ‘I wish you were here.’ And that’s another part of
Top Gear
that we love – we all wish we were there too. Often the presenters say exactly what you might be thinking while watching them at home. This happened again at the end of the piece, when Nick Mason left the Enzo behind and flew home in his helicopter and, as Clarkson himself asks, ‘Why would you do that?’

Jeremy’s Ferrari love affair was first seen way back in 1995 when he appeared on
Jeremy Clarkson’s Motorworld
and called the red supercars ‘sex on wheels’. But he wasn’t a brand snob. In Series 5, it was hard to ignore the pure exhilaration he obviously felt when testing the madcap Ariel Atom. This ingenious piece of British engineering from a company with only seven employees unleashed a brain-distorting burst of acceleration, largely thanks to having its chassis on the outside of the car, a mechanical
exoskeleton
which made the end car almost literally as light as a feather. In fact, such was its lightweight purity that it actually boasted more bhp per ton than even the Enzo. This left the car with a 0–60 time of just 2.9 seconds.

When Clarkson reviewed it, he began by saying, how many middle-aged men died on motorbikes purchased as some kind of mid-life crisis impulse buy? Instead, why not buy the Atom, a genuine four-wheel alternative to a superbike (likewise, with no roof and no windscreen)?

Notably, the Ariel Atom is one of the most popular
Top Gear
trading cards because on it is a brilliant picture of Clarkson’s face almost literally ‘melting’ as the brutal acceleration pulls his cheeks back to behind his ears. It makes for hilarious viewing as Jeremy shouts that he looks like an alien or The Elephant Man. Aside from the gags, he
loves
the car; it even qualifies for a Power Lap time because it’s commercially available and can negotiate all standard speed bumps. The Stig’s lap time –
sans
any music as there is no stereo – was a blistering 1.19.5, second only at that point to the Enzo and even somewhat quicker than Porsche’s flagship hypercar, the Carrera GT. Clarkson eventually declares that he has never known acceleration like the Atom and that it’s the most exciting car he’s
ever
driven. For all his controversy, it’s hard to see how a compliment like that can’t be anything other than a huge boost to the tiny car manufacturer. (Note:
Top Gear
later released a radio-controlled toy version of this mad vehicle.)

Another classic high-speed lap for Clarkson came in the aforementioned Caparo T1, a road-legal racing car designed by the same people who developed the legendary McLaren F1. The car had a registration plate and lights, as well as indicators and, in theory, space for a passenger so the
Top Gear
team felt it was worth a power lap to see if the T1 could beat the then-Power Lap leader, the bonkers Koenigsegg (1.17.6). Like the Atom, there was no stereo for the tame racing driver’s tunes but unlike the Ariel, this particular beast cost a massive £2,235,000.

However, the Caparo T1 was not a car with a simple history: its mechanical development was plagued with problems because the team behind it were trying to achieve an engineering feat that had rarely been rivalled: to put Formula 1 speed and power on the British roads. As mentioned, when the car was tested by rival show
Fifth Gear
’s Jason Plato (a touring car champion), the
engine had set on fire and Plato suffered burns to his face and arms. Clarkson made light of this chequered history by saying the
Top Gear
emergency team usually consists of ‘a van with sticking plasters and aspirin in it’ only for the camera to pan across to a fleet of ambulances, paramedic motorbikes and even an air ambulance helicopter! He wore an F1 safety suit and helmet and was clearly a little apprehensive.

And he had good reason to be cautious – the car had 575bhp (more than most Ferraris) but weighed ‘less than a patio heater’ according to Clarkson. This meant that its ratio of bhp per ton was
double
the Bugatti Veyron and the 0–60mph time was equal to that superlative VW engineering masterpiece. Sure enough, Clarkson was blown away by the speed, saying he had never felt acceleration like it. The speed was akin to the Atom, but he criticised the T1’s handling as carrying way too much understeer and even went so far as to say that on the roads this issue, mixed with the seismic power, could prove highly dangerous. After several repairs and numerous lightning quick laps, Clarkson was energised but with reservations; they then unleashed the Stig in the T1.

Back in the studio, Jeremy reveals the mind-boggling lap time of 1.10.6, a full seven seconds faster than the mad Koenigsegg … only to immediately take the car back down as it was incapable of going over a speed bump. Clarkson said the nose was so low, it couldn’t even run over Gandhi.

In Series 2, the
Top Gear
team had already lapped without incident in the ‘modest’ standard Koenigsegg but since then, matters moved up a notch. This unique supercar manufacturer is the brainchild of its namesake founder, a Swedish
multi-millionaire
who made his first million importing frozen chickens into Estonia and was inspired to create the car when, as a
five-year
-old, he watched a movie about a local bicycle repairman who made his own racing car. Koenigsegg was very serious about
speed: when his standard Koenigsegg achieved a top speed of 242 mph, it beat the world’s previous fastest production car (a record that had stood for years) – the McLaren F1’s 240mph; then the Bugatti came along and smashed the Koenigsegg’s fastest, so the competition was on for yet more speed.

When Koenigsegg delivered the souped-up version known as the CCX to
Top Gear
in Series 8, the lack of a rear wing meant the car did not have sufficient downforce to lap the track at high speed without spinning off – as The Stig found out when he bowled into a tyre wall. This incident attracted criticism for the show’s treatment of the cars themselves. The tabloid headline, ‘TOP GEAR YOBS WRECK £1 MILLION CAR’, fuelled a series of articles saying the team were essentially ‘road thugs’ for having mashed up the brutally fast Koenigsegg CC8. Behind the scenes, the Swedish manufacturer shipped the car back home and fitted it with a small rear spoiler, then dutifully flew it back to the UK. Rumour has it that The Stig suggested this modification and he was proved correct. And the result was a brand new lap record of 1.17.6. (Note: Koenigsegg say the faster time was a result of more than just this one alteration.)

The fastest-ever lap around the track, however, was in a Renault Formula 1 car: the French F1 team had been watching the
Top Gear
Power board time grow faster and faster, usually hovering around the 1.20 minute area for most supercars and so they contacted the programme to say they could get their 2005 F1 car – as used by Fernando Alonso to win the Driver’s and Constructor’s Championship – around in
under a minute
. Who better to drive at the helm than The Stig? The feature was a fascinating and clever foil to allow
Top Gear
to describe the technology and engineering brilliance behind a F1 car: we were told that they needed 16 engineers on site just to start the car up and given a long and breath-taking list of performance stats.

With more than half the lap at full throttle, The Stig took the car round and pipped 183mph on the straight. In as much as The Stig is a mysterious character, this piece also reminded viewers that he is a phenomenal race driver too. Even though the track was greasy, the car went round in a ridiculous 59 seconds dead. Back in the studio, Clarkson asked Hammond to take the Renault’s leader board-topping time down because it was ineligible, but The Hamster was unable to reach it.

On the subject of Renault Formula 1, Hammond himself has driven one of their cars around a track. Although he was seen spinning and initially struggled to even pull away from the pits, don’t be misled into thinking he wasn’t doing exceptionally well. Dr Kerry Spackman has worked in Formula 1 for years, including at McLaren and Jaguar, and he explains why such a car is deceptively difficult to drive: ‘For a while Richard couldn’t even drive it fast enough to get to the point where it was working properly: he couldn’t get the tyres up to temperature, it wasn’t driving fast enough for the wings to work and he was crashing the car and sliding off the track, it just wasn’t in the operating zone. In an F1 car everything is just so much faster, it’s like facing my tennis serve as against facing Andy Roddick’s tennis serve. In an F1 car, you are walking on a tight rope.’ This is an opinion backed up by many former racers, such as Sir Stirling Moss who told Hammond in their one-off interview show that, ‘there’s a very big gap between the best amateur and the poorest professional.’

While driving the F1 car, Hammond could also be seen and heard shaking and sounding as if he was being ‘roughed up’. This is no surprise to Dr Spackman: ‘It’s hard to appreciate the sheer violence you experience in a Formula 1 car, it’s unbelievable. If, for example, you are going down a normal road and you jam on your brakes as hard as you possibly can so that everything in the backseat flies forward and your tyres are screaming, that’s
probably 0.8 of a G, if you’re lucky. Formula 1 racing cars routinely pull 5 to 6G under braking, so the driver’s body weight goes to half a ton. At that point, their head is the equivalent weight of someone sitting on it, but at a right angle, and that weight is bouncing on you. It’s banging you from side to side while you’re trying to do the most delicate actions and yet drive at the highest speed; it’s like being shaken around and beaten up while trying to do brain surgery. They didn’t have time to explain all that in the episode when Hammond drove the F1 car, it’s just a whole different thing.’

Unlike the old
Top Gear
, the new generation rarely ventures into the world of competitive motorsport. Where its predecessor enjoyed a close relationship with rallying, for example, and regularly reported on F1, the new
Top Gear
typically only dabbles in this area when famous racing drivers come on the show or world champion drivers help them with their stunts (for example, Mika Häkkinen teaching Captain Slow to rally).

Perhaps one of the oddest but most entertaining motorsport features was when Richard visited a man who’d built a monstrous drag racer from scratch in his kitchen, but he couldn’t actually get out. Along came
Top Gear
to help him axle-grind the wall off his kitchen and extract the car with a mini-digger and some precarious-looking ramps.

It was all good fun but on a more serious note, the most direct involvement of the new
Top Gear
in actual racing came when the team took part in the Silverstone Britcar 24-hr Race in Series 10, Episode 9. Previously, they had made some bio-fuel by planting rapeseed, but James allegedly bought the wrong type of seed and so they produced a vast quantity – 500 gallons – far more than they needed. Rather than risk the wrath of eco-campaigners by throwing this fuel away, they chose instead to enter the race at Silverstone to use it all up.