This is the first time Chris Harris has spoken about Freddie Flintoff’s horrendous Top Gear crash
Top Gear presenter Chris Harris has broken his silence on the crash of co-presenter Freddie Flintoff.
Flintoff suffered major injuries following a crash while filming Top Gear alongside Harris.
The crash happened as Flintoff was driving a three-wheeled supercar, and led to the ex-England cricketer suffering several broken ribs, as well as facial scarring.
Harris is an automotive journalist and presented the last iteration of Top Gear alongside Flintoff and Paddy McGuinness.
Chris Harris appeared in the last season of Top Gear to air. (Mike Marsland via Getty Images)
The trio took over following the failed stint by Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc, in which Harris was also an occasional co-presenter.
Harris spoke about the incident in an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience.
Shockingly, the former Top Gear presenter claims that three months prior he had warned bosses at the BBC that ‘someone was going to die’ due to safety failings on the show.
Prior to Flintoff’s crash, Richard Hammond had been involved in two serious crashes on the show.
One of these, in which Hammond was driving a high-powered supercar at 288mph, saw the presenter placed into a two week long medically induced coma.
Harris claims that, on the day of Flintoff’s crash, the show’s production was ‘rushed’, and that the former-cricketer wasn’t even wearing a helmet.
Harris said: “He wasn’t wearing a crash helmet. And if you do that, even at 25, 30 miles an hour, the injuries that you sustain are profound. I was there on the day, I was the only presenter with Fred that day.
“I remember the radio message that I heard.
“I heard someone say this has been a real accident here. The car’s upside down. So I ran to the window, looked out and he wasn’t moving.
Freddie Flintoff suffered horrendous injuries to his face as a result of the Top Gear crash. (BBC)
“So I thought he was dead. I assumed he was, then he moved.”
Harris went on to say: “So that day was very difficult, made even more difficult by the fact that the build-up to that particular shoot, I knew that we were – at the last minute – that we were using a Morgan three-wheeler.
“It’s a very, difficult car, you know. The name tells you its physics is complicated. It doesn’t mean it’s inherently dangerous.
“You have to be aware of its limitations. And I think that really was difficult. And you need experience.
“There were two people that had driven a Morgan three-wheeler before present that day, me and someone else, a pro driver.
“We were sitting inside at that time. No one had asked us anything about the car. They’d just gone on and shot it without us.
“I think if I’m looking in the mirror, I find it very difficult, even now, that Andrew, who I loved to bits, a lovely man, he was a pro cricket player. He wasn’t an automotive guy.
“But what was never spoken about was that three months before the accident, I’d gone to the BBC and said, ‘unless you change something, someone’s going to die on this show’
“I said ‘if we carry on at the very least we’re gonna have a serious injury at the very worst we’re gonna have fatality.’”
Featured Image Credit: BBC Mike Marsland/Getty
