The Top Gear Story (18 page)

Also, don’t be fooled by the slapdash comedy that the presenter promotes when reviewing cars or leading features: his preparation is second to none. When Clarkson reviewed the Veyron racing from Italy to London, he explained on-screen that before attempting the top speed of 253mph, you had to stop the car, release a button in the door frame and run a series of precise checks – he then proceeded to give the rear tyre a Laurel and Hardy-style kick before shrugging his shoulders as if to say, ‘That’ll do’. Yet it’s a known fact that behind the scenes, Clarkson knew
everything
about the Veyron before he even got into it. It’s not unknown for him to return home at midnight after a long day’s filming only to re-write pieces that he and Andy Wilman have been talking about ready for reconsideration in a production meeting at 9am the next day. According to Wilman, Clarkson is the ‘engine room’ of
Top Gear
: ‘It’s Jeremy’s show. No question, because it can’t be a democracy – it’s Jeremy’s vision. We’ve all got drive but his drive is noticeably amazing.’

But in the cold light of day, away from the studio lights and the headlines, is Clarkson really the Beelzebub of ecology, is he as bad as some people like to make out? His close friend AA Gill revealed in the
Mirror
that this might not necessarily be the case, saying that at home Jeremy carefully separates his rubbish ready for correct recycling. JC has actually gone on record to say that hydrogen cars may be the way forward; further, as an avid fan and supporter of British engineering, he has nonetheless criticised the efforts of twentieth-century engineers, saying they are merely refining the gargantuan genius of nineteenth-century minds. By way of example, he says the fact that we still drive cars
by means of ‘small explosions’ is proof of this and he has belittled the car industry’s inability (or perhaps reluctance?) to invent an alternative method of fuelling vehicles.

When it was revealed that Jeremy recycles, some critics – not wishing to let him off the hook so easily – denounced him as a hypocrite but he retorted that the problem was exacerbated by the inevitable polarisation that occurs when green campaigners denounce people as either ‘completely green or not green at all’. The lack of a middle ground frustrates him and he blamed this on, ‘lunatics who want everyone to live in crofts and Facebook trees.’ Clarkson uses a much-maligned patio heater but reserves the right to complain about wastefully individually wrapped lumps of sugar in expensive restaurants and howl at supermarkets for using too much packaging. He highlights US packaging mountains in landfill as an example, saying that he’s not convinced that man’s 3 per cent contribution to the carbon dioxide bank affects climate and also states that he’s not entirely convinced that a rise in global temperatures is necessarily a bad thing although he did back this up by saying a parrot would make a more interesting Cotswolds garden species than a sparrow. So, the problem with Clarkson is sometimes you never know if he’s being serious or not, and he knows this and loves it.

Later he also admitted that he grows his own vegetables, eggs and barley, although he qualified this statement by saying ‘a man’ actually grows them for him on part of his land. So, he’s not exactly Felicity Kendal in the seventies BBC sitcom
The Good Life
, but perhaps a start has been made. What’s more, he reveals that he composts with old issues of his long-standing enemy, the
Guardian
. Yet this is also the man who refuses to buy Fairtrade crisps. He’s a total conundrum.

His argument is that he hates the methodology of the environmental movement, but ‘loves the destination’. The end
result is something he completely sees the validity of, but the approach and means of getting there drive him wild.

Worse still, in a survey conducted by car rental firm City Car Club of the ‘Top Ten Most Polluting Celebrities’ not only did Clarkson not come first, he didn’t even beat The Hamster, who came in two positions above him at eighth (James May did not make the list). Jenson Button, whose own personal cars had an average carbon emission of 383.1g/km, nearly three times the average output of a typical family car, was the worst offender. Also in the list were Simon Cowell and Gordon Ramsay, with JC scraping in at No. 10.

Speaking of personal cars, The City Car Club quoted Jezza’s private collection as containing: a Lamborghini Gallardo, a Volvo XC90, a Ford Focus, a BMW M5, an Aston Martin V8 Vantage, a Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG, a Mercedes-Benz CLK AMG, a Range Rover TDV8 Vogue SE, two VW Sciroccos, a BMW Z4, a Toyota Land Cruiser Amazon and a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X. Clarkson has several favourites and contends that you’re not a true petrol-head until you’ve owned an Alfa Romeo. He long admired the Ford GT, a road version of the legendary racing car and bought one only to find it was so unreliable that he returned it for a full refund just a month on. Later he changed his mind and bought the car back, despite telling fans that he had never been able to complete a single journey in the vehicle. Back in the old
Top Gear
years, Clarkson had been unable to road test the Ford GT40 because he was too tall to fit in the driver’s seat of that particular (smaller) version. The considerably shorter Noel Edmonds took his place and went on to buy one for his own personal collection – a very rare car at the time.

In Series 1, broadcast in 2002, Clarkson tested his very own Mercedes SL55 AMG round the track … at about 5mph. Although this was the fastest automatic car in the world at the time, he wasn’t about to ruin it by treating the vehicle with the same
brutal testing antics as other people’s cars! As an aside, during this piece he can be heard talking about difficult days at work before saying, ‘
Not
that I’ve ever had a hard day at work!’

Clarkson’s new Ford GT was eventually sold off to make room for a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder – the car that he reviewed and then bought for himself in Series 8. So, what is his favourite of all? Well, he obviously has several dream supercars that he has enjoyed but the vehicle that he repeatedly flags up as impressive is, oddly enough, the Volvo XC90.

Over the years, Jeremy has been blatantly ‘anti-Porsche’. When reviewing a Ferrari, there is always an element of personal bias – he just loves that Italian marque. However, with Porsche he finds them all a little clinical, too precise. He is repeatedly critical of the iconic 911’s rear-engined set-up although he does on occasion complement Porsche’s technical prowess, but his reviews are usually muted at best. There have been rare exceptions to this: he almost bought a 2003 911 GT3 and later reviewed the German manufacturer’s fastest-ever model, the hypercar Carrera GT, in glowing terms.

This lengthy list is just some of the vehicles that he
has
owned at some point, rather than all at once; nonetheless it’s a beautiful selection of cars. At the same time, by virtue of owning them he has consigned a number of classic vehicles to the ‘Uncool’ side of the Cool Wall, that prerequisite of any machine owned by any of the
Top Gear
presenters. And finally with regard to machinery, he once put an EEL F1A jet fighter in his garden but this was subsequently removed after a request from the council, who didn’t believe his claim that it was a ‘leaf blower’.

Jeremy Clarkson’s self-deprecation is often missed and it would be foolish to think he is as exaggerated in real life as he appears on the screen. Back home, among his family and his idyllic country life, the former local reporter is a man who has
become one of the world’s most successful television faces in recent times. From being a humble Paddington Bear salesman, it’s no mean feat.

‘I’m so alive, I’m so alive!’

Richard Hammond, speaking from the cockpit of the jet car after the first test run

I
’d been away for a few days abroad and as I walked through the airport departures lounge, I caught sight of a one-day-old copy of the
Sun
with the headline: ‘TOP GEAR STAR IN 315MPH CRASH’. I must admit, my blood ran cold. Having been overseas, I’d heard nothing about the accident, so to suddenly see Richard Hammond’s face next to such a frightening headline was chilling. Suddenly, all the
Top Gear
fun, the high-jinx, the knockabout humour, all seemed instantly out of place: we all knew they did these crazy stunts and tricks, but they’d never really get hurt, would they?
Would
they?

It was not unheard of for celebrities to have accidents while filming TV shows. In 2006, pop star Ms Dynamite crashed at more than 100mph while filming
The Race
on Sky but was okay after
precautionary hospital checks. On the same show, Ingrid Tarrant flipped a truck earlier in the week but was also unhurt, albeit understandably a little shaken. Over on
Fifth Gear
, touring car champion and presenter Jason Plato was badly burnt when the Caparo T1 he was testing caught fire on the track. In the USA, on WLS-TV, a car actually crashed into the TV studio while the news was live on air! Richard Hammond himself had previously only suffered minor injuries throughout his
Top Gear
career, with a broken thumb and a cracked sternum being his most serious afflictions to date but there had never been anything so traumatic and frightening as what happened to him in 2006.

The day was 20 September 2006.
Top Gear
was at Elvington Airfield, just a few miles southeast of York, filming for an episode in Series 9 that was due to be screened in early 2007. The plan was to have Hammond drive a jet car with the aim of exceeding 300mph. Remember the ‘Ideas Board’ in the
Top Gear
office? Well, around 2004, Richard had posted a note on it saying that he wanted to ‘go really, really fast, faster than supercar fast’. Over the years, he has made no secret of his attraction: ‘I love speed,’ he once told the
Guardian
, ‘I don’t know why. I think the desire to move fast comes from man running after an antelope with a spear, it comes from the need to catch stuff.’ He was about to get his chance. Internally the project was to be called, ‘Vampire – The Need for Speed’.

Now you might think that if Captain Slow can take a Veyron – with nice leather seats and electric windows – to 253mph, then it’s not a big deal to go that little bit extra. However, Bugatti spent millions developing the Super Sport, which increased the maximum speed of the ‘standard’ car by only five miles an hour so to surpass 300mph takes you into the realm of cars that are effectively four wheels with a rocket strapped to the seat. Dangerous stuff.

The
Top Gear
production team are used to organising complex and dangerous challenges and this was no exception. Initially a company who specialised in jet-powered cars (and was indeed owned and run by two of the world’s finest jet-car racers) contacted the programme to suggest it might be a fun feature to film their attempt on the land speed record, set for July 2006.
Top Gear
was not in the habit of covering such events in this way but the show’s production team did like the idea of putting a presenter in a ludicrously fast jet car. It was perfect
Top Gear
territory – so, who was going to drive this beast?

Why, Captain Slow – James May, of course. The production team were aware that Hammond already had a lot of excellent features for the forthcoming series and felt it appropriate for May to be the man behind the wheel of the car, particularly given his nickname. Then quite late in the day, it proved impossible to organise James’s hectic diary around the schedule and so Hammond got his chance to drive ‘really, really fast’ after all.

The car to be used was called the Vampire, a jet-powered modified racer and holder of the British land speed record at 300.3mph, set in 2000 at Elvington itself. This type of car accelerates with such ferocity that forces of 6G are commonly recorded, akin to that in a state-of-the-art jet fighter. The car was owned by Northants-based Primetime Landspeed Engineering (PTLE), revered experts in the field who would also provide the training for Hammond (it was normally driven by Colin Fallows, holder of the speed record).

PTLE was a collaboration between its principals, Colin Fallows and Mark Newby, and they were very much leading experts in this area. They had been working together since 1994 and had a stable of three such jet cars; interestingly, one of these – named ‘e=motion’ – is powered by electric batteries. Fallows himself was a renowned racer and also worked as an engineer at Santa
Pod raceway; he had been in teams who built drag cars, which often used former Red Arrows’ Rolls-Royce Orpheus jet engines.

Hellbender and Vampire were both well-known cars on the British drag/jet car circuit until Hellbender was involved in a fatal accident at Santa Pod in 1986, when it suffered a suspension failure in a side-by-side drag race. Colin Fallows subsequently bought Vampire and various advanced upgrades and state-
of-the
-art modifications were made. The company stated that Vampire had made in the region of 3,000 runs without incident, a truly remarkable record: this was a team and a car at the very top of their sport.

The track at Elvington Airfield was a site that PTLE were very familiar with, having previously made several land-speed record attempts there. It’s a well-known airfield, principally famed for the huge air show it hosts every summer; another advantage is that it’s not an operational airfield. The track itself is 3km long and as such, is perfect for air shows and aircraft exhibitions. It has also been used for testing Formula 1 cars, land yachting and even police driver training.

The
Top Gear
team’s preparations were exhaustive and meticulous. On the day itself, there would be onsite medical teams who were fully conversant with motor-sport incidents, the training from PTLE would be thorough, a specialist company (Racelogic) was brought in to host the telemetry, no film crews were sited along the runway and a
Top Gear
race consultant was sent in advance to meet the team at PTLE and prepare a briefing for the programme’s team and Hammond himself. Indeed, the consultant visited PTLE’s Northampton premises on 18 June and was happy with what he saw. In his subsequent briefing to Richard, he explained the controls and gave other detailed advice about driving a car at such speeds. A full and detailed Programme Risk Assessment (PRA) was completed, then referred
to the ORM department (Operational Risk Management) for extra certainty. This procedure was not always used for filming such events, which reflects the extent of the
Top Gear
team’s planning – notes later showed that great emphasis was placed on Hammond receiving sufficient time for training and that he was not to be rushed under any circumstances. The event was months and months in the planning. An internal Programme Risk Assessment stressed in very clear terms that they had to be certain that in the event of an accident, Hammond could be rushed to the appropriate medical facilities as fast as possible.

On the actual day of filming, the same meticulous measures were taken. The track was painstakingly walked to check for any debris and other fine detail precautions were taken. A course was marked out ending in two large green cones, which represented the braking point for Hammond to shut down the engine and engage the primary parachute. The length of the course was intended to allow him to get near to a speed of 300mph.

Measured runs were scheduled to be completed in one direction only along a pre-set course and the speed would be measured by advanced GPS satellite telemetry. The intention was to record a maximum rather than an average speed over two runs across a measured course (the latter being how they would have qualified for a land-speed record attempt). But a speed record was not what
Top Gear
was after: they wanted Hammond to go exceptionally fast and then describe the experience. Andy Wilman was later revealed to have vetoed an official land-speed record attempt because he felt it was too complex and risky. Yet more caution.

Clearly, although Richard Hammond is a very accomplished driver, this was a whole new world. That is why it was organised for PTLE’s two principals, Mark Newby and Colin Fallows, to train him on the morning of filming. Specialist as this type of racing is,
Hammond was not the first non-professional to take the wheel of the Vampire: in fact, members of the owners’ families and one journalist had previously been trained to drive it. When Colin Goodwin drove the car for
Autocar
magazine in 2001, he said that he’d found PTLE to be exemplary trainers and that a seasoned driving journalist could train to a safe standard in one day.

Richard was in excited spirits and learned fast, showing a natural aptitude for the training he was being given; he also admitted that he felt very confident in the preparations and the team around him, so he was not fearful at all: ‘You become in a suspended state of concentration, thinking about what you’re going to do, but there’s no fear.’ In breaks between training, he was relaxed and made the on-site team giggle with his spoof stunt-driver impressions of the ‘Silver Flash’, resplendent in a Formula 1-style flameproof suit. Joking aside, his helmet, gloves and race suit were of the highest standard and as worn by Formula 1 drivers. Although he did not wear the HANS head restraint as sported by F1 drivers, he had a very strong foam neck collar to assist with any potential whiplash.

Training was complete just after lunchtime, as was some filming of the car and other general footage. This was not a normal vehicle, so Fallows’s lengthy expertise was crucial: there is no clutch, no accelerator, you set the engine and then to move forward, you took your foot off the brake. In addition, Colin Fallows first did a so-called ‘shake down’ run in the jet car with the afterburner ignited to check everything was working on the vehicle and with the film and data capture crew (‘on the jet car’s side is a sticker saying ‘Real Race Cars Have Afterburners’). For each run, Hammond would have to sit in the tiny cockpit, strapped in with ultra-strong belts to the point of being barely able to breath; it was in fact a racing specification five-point Simpson safety harness. If the arms are not kept tight in a
cockpit, in the event of an accident it has been known that the driver’s limbs are sliced off. To get the right amount of tension for safety, an instructor would actually force his knee into Hammond’s chest to make certain he was completely secured. It was an uncomfortable and claustrophobic environment.

Richard began his first actual speed run at 12.54pm, but not before an extensive list of checks had to be made, all of which were recorded. Once the star began his test runs, events proceeded to plan. Initially his speed was relatively modest, although that’s all relative as the first run went to 206.1mph. After each run, he was filmed to capture his reaction.

As he became more comfortable with the controls, the speeds accelerated and it was clear from fairly quickly on that he was capable of going very fast indeed. They broke for lunch after the third run, which had reached 220.4mph. It was now decided that Hammond was doing sufficiently well to be able to engage the afterburner. In total, he would complete six runs, with the afterburner only being used on runs four, five and six – although on run four it did not ignite properly after he had not pressed the igniter switch for long enough and so the run was aborted after less than a kilometre. It was after using the afterburner successfully for the first time that he said those prophetic words: ‘I’m so alive! I’m so alive!’

The penultimate run of the day, his sixth, was a complete run with the afterburner on full-length. With the afterburner on, the car was generating 10,000-brake horsepower – that’s the equivalent of
10
Bugatti Veyrons, or
18
Ferrari 458s, or
100
Ford Fiestas. The Red Arrows could generate up to 3500lb of thrust when using Rolls-Royce engines fitted to the car; however, with the afterburner lit, this was increased to a mind-boggling 5000lb of thrust.

The sixth run registered 314mph, although Hammond was not
told of this speed in order to be able to capture his elation
on-camera
later on hearing the news; a member of PTLE was overheard saying, ‘That was highly impressive!’ It would have been a British record. As mentioned, however, the correct stringent monitoring procedures were not in place (this was not an official attempt, as the
Top Gear
team had repeatedly pointed out) and so the achievement did not qualify.

The run was originally scheduled to be the final attempt as the shoot was provisionally planned to end at 5pm, partly to keep noise levels limited, but it was decided to gain an extension to the booking to allow one final run to capture footage of the Vampire’s afterburner being lit. Part of the reason seems to be that the team were worried about wet weather the next day and no one was prepared to send Hammond out in the Vampire in such treacherous conditions. With the prospect of the second day’s filming being rained off, they decided to take one more run: this final extended run, the seventh of the day at 5.25pm, was the one which nearly cost Richard Hammond his life.

He later said: ‘I suppose it’s like when you were playing outside as a kid and then your mum called you in for dinner. You’d always stay out for a bit longer,’ to which Clarkson responded, ‘And that’s when you’d always fall out the tree!’

Exactly 14.25 seconds into the seventh run, after a distance of 1,120 metres had been covered and with the Vampire travelling at 288mph, the front right tyre blew out. The car veered off sharply to the right, and dug into the grassy outfield, before turning over and rolling several times. Finally, it flipped over end-to-end, then travelled forwards (while upside down at 230mph) and came to rest inverted, perpendicular to the line of the track and over 60 metres from the runway.