A Grand Tour presenter crashes TWICE in the latest show – and it’s not the usual suspect
THERE’S a big crash in the latest episode of The Grand Tour. There usually is.
But this time it’s not Richard Hammond who gets carted off to hospital for a brain and back scan
It’s James May, aka Captain Slow.
Or as Hammond now calls him, “Captain Crash”.
Actually, May crashes TWICE in The Grand Tour: A Scandi Flick, which streams on Prime Video from midnight tonight.
The first one is a biggie. He brakes too late after trying to clock the highest speed in a tunnel and smashes into a rock wall.
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Jeremy Clarkson had a go first and admitted it was sketchy.
The second Code Brown sees May end up in a frozen lake.
Before we hear from the trio, here’s a little aperitif on the new episode: The boys pick their favourite road-going rally cars to travel across the remote north of Scandinavia — Hammond in a Subaru Impreza WRX, May in a Mitsubishi Evo VIII and Jezza in . . . er . . . an Audi RS 4.
Clarkson sets his car on fire trying to de-ice it, tows a one-legged skier, Hammond’s keys get encased in a block of iced urine. Lots of chaos. Lots of things get broken.
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Business as usual, then. All combined with jaw-dropping Nordic scenery.
May tried to play down the tunnel smash at an old submarine base but I’m having none of it.
He escaped with a broken rib and a bust lip — courtesy of a flying walkie-talkie — but only because he yanked the handbrake to avoid a head-on crash.
Otherwise it would have been a very different story.
May, who nudged 78mph in the test, said: “It looks quite dramatic but I was OK basically. Hammond has much better crashes
“It’s all very out of character, isn’t it? Maybe it’s just machismo, I didn’t think I was guilty of that sort of thing, but I was trying to win.
“Clarkson’s was being a bore about his V8 so I thought, I’m not going to let him have that.
“But I left my braking a bit late. I turned it sideways on the handbrake when I knew I was never going to stop. I sort of thought, ‘I’m going to hit the thing, I better hit it sideways. I can’t turn around the corner because the crew are there and I don’t want to run over anybody’.”
JUST MACHISMO
Clarkson admitted: “It was a massive accident. I saw his head clobber the side of the B-pillar.
“You know when Hammond has an accident, he keeps going after the accident has begun. You can roll down a road upside down and on fire for as long as you like, and it’s very unlikely you’ll get hurt.
“What hurts you is coming to a sudden stop. And that’s what happened to James. I’m not entirely certain how fast he hit that rock face, but I’m going to say 40 miles an hour.
"And from 40 miles an hour to a dead stop is more dangerous than rolling down a hill. I couldn’t believe how fast he was going.”
Hammond, in full p***-take mode, said: “He’s become Captain Crash.
“I always get it off taxi drivers, ‘Ooh blimey, don’t crash this one’. Maybe he can have that crown for a bit now. The crashing thing. I don’t mind. He’s more than welcome.”
May’s injured Evo needed a lot of TLC in a local workshop in order to continue filming.
May said: “It was properly binned. The engine had moved several inches to one side. The body was twisted. The front wishbone was bent back on itself.
BODY WAS TWISTED
"The intercooler plumbing looked like a trombone that had been through a mangle. Even the front brake calliper had cracked.
“It depressed me utterly. I hate breaking things, especially cars.
"But we managed to get together enough bits or hammer enough bits straight to make it go again — and it worked absolutely perfectly. Like a rally car should after a crash.”
But then came accident No2, crashing through thin ice on a frozen lake.
Clarkson said: “This one wasn’t his fault. No way. It could have been any of us.
“Perhaps we should have stopped and checked with the authorities that the ice was thick enough to support us over the entire area of the lake, but we didn’t have time for that.
“So, we just bombed across it, and he found a thin bit. It was quite funny watching it.”
- The Grand Tour: A Scandi Flick streams on Prime Video from midnight tonight.
CLARKSON ON SHOW NAME
He said: “It’s a clever title because a Scandi flick is a manoeuvre performed by Scandinavian rally drivers when they are approaching a bend.
"If it’s a right-hander, they turn sharply to the left just before they need to turn right, which upsets the balance of the car and causes a skid.
"It is also the name given to any Scandinavian pornographical movie
"And this show is porn. Location porn.
"Because, holy mother of Mary, northern Norway doesn’t half get its peaks out for the lads.”
ALSO STARRING . . . CLARKSON’S AUDI RS 4
HE says: “The idea was that we’d buy three cars that had been created to go rallying, and straight away Richard shotgunned the Subaru Impreza, James bagged the Mitsubishi Evo, which is why I ended up with an Audi RS 4.
"Which, as James and Richard were keen to point out, never was a rally car.
"But it was descended from one.
"The Quattro. And there’s no getting round the fact that its V8 is one of the very best engines ever made.”
HAMMOND’S SUBARU IMPREZA WRX
He says: “It’s just magnificent. It’s analogue, it’s mechanical, it’s not electronically enhanced beyond the inevitable.
"They compromised a rally car to make a saloon car, which means you can feel it doing what it is born to do, right down to the configuration of the engine.
"I’ve always loved them, always wanted one, so I’m keeping this one.
"I’m going to stick it through my workshop and turn it into a bit of a beast.”
MAY’S MITSUBISHI EVO VIII
He says: “I was going to keep mine too. But it’s completely bollocksed.
"It’s a different length one side from the other.
"Rally cars are crashed all the time.
"They are beaten back into shape in the field and then they carry on.
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";The crash and revival of my car cemented its rallying credentials.
"I was simply conducting a far more thorough test than the other two.”
