Richard Hammond recalls 'dread' of thinking he was going to die in Grand Tour horror crash

Richard Hammond has recalled the moment he thought he was going to die when he lost control of his supercar during The Grand Tour.

Hammond, 47, sped off road in a Rimac Concept One electric car while filming the Hemberg time trial for the Amazon series earlier this month and was airlifted to hospital.

The petrolhead said he was overcome with a “moment of dread” as he tumbled down hill at speed and thought he would die.

Speaking about the crash to Drivetribe, he said: “I was aware that I was up high, and that inevitably the car was going to come down. And yeah of course there was a moment of dread – ‘Oh God, I'm going to die’.”

He continued: “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.

“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’.”

It is the second time Hammond has suffered a serious crash while filming after he was left with life-threatening head injuries following a high-speed crash on Top Gear in 2006.

Comparing the two, he joked that he doesn’t have a “history” of crashing and revealed that because he was conscious throughout the second crash he was able to set himself free from the car.

He said: “I was conscious of that one to the point where it went over at 300mph and at that point just before it dug in then I was unconscious.

“This one I was conscious all the way through and I was thinking well I can’t make this. You’re aware of tumbling sky, ground, sky, ground. It was like being in a tumble dryer full of bricks.

“And I think it would have been in that that I got injured. The main injury is this knee that I’ve messed.”

Jeremy Clarkson recently revealed that Hammond's accident has delayed series two of The Grand Tour.