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Richard Hammond says brain injury from York crash will stay forever

Summarised from 2 outlets · Updated 23 Oct, 16:39 · Archive

TV presenter Richard Hammond says his brain injury from a 320mph dragster crash in 2006 is permanent.

Richard Hammond crashed the jet-powered dragster Vampire at nearly 320mph while filming for Top Gear at the former RAF Elvington airbase in York in 2006. He sustained serious head injuries but recovered and returned to the show in early 2007.

Hammond told the High Performance podcast that his brain injury is "with me forever" and that he fears it could lead to early onset dementia. He said he has not had a scan to check for the condition, saying he is "scared to death" to do it. "I wouldn't want to know that's what was coming, would I?" he said, adding that he forgets things frequently but attributes this partly to his age and lack of concentration.

Hammond expressed concern about the impact on his daughters, saying that if dementia were developing, "I'm going to let them down – it's going to be primarily difficult for them." In 2022, he got back in the reconstructed dragster as part of a video for the DriveTribe YouTube channel, which he co-founded with Jeremy Clarkson and James May, describing the experience as "genuinely weird".

Richard Hammond says brain injury from York crash will stay forever
Image: The Press (York)

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In this story: Richard Hammond · Top Gear · RAF Elvington · York · DriveTribe · Jeremy Clarkson · James May

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