Richard Hammond discusses his Rimac crash

well what you're making is do another you do know that's the one we'll crash off yeah so you went off the track here you're flying something like 30 meters hitting the road under you and then continue rolling down what's the slope and I said I do remember saying to them drag me by my arms not my legs because I think a broken that leg it was the very last one of the day we'd ended up at a hill climb in Switzerland and I'd done for four five runs three or four runs the last one of the day at the top just over the finishing line got away from me and I went over the edge and over the finishing line then there's a slight right and a left and as I went around the left back in stepped away I think there's a little clip of video around that you can see it's sort of steps away and then over I went I was a very much aware at that point that hit being a hill climb and me being at the end of it I would be at the top of the hill so what followed was getting down the hill very very quickly you've got the track yeah nobody actually win so it hit the road first hit the road under the road where you left the track just a level road yeah you hit that and then you continue continue rolling for another hundred meters or so and because those pictures are so the hill climb is 1.8 kilometers run long with an altitude increase of 157 meters from start to finish and when you went off there was beyond the finishing line from the moment when you went off until the car stopped is a err distance of 110 meters not taking into account the altitude change there's also three halves is in the way yeah so you didn't go straight you kind of got around the house and I guess because the slope is you know in this direction it was going more here and then because of the slope it went right after the house luckily because it's a wooden house yeah yeah so you went off the track here you're flying something like 30 meters hitting the road under you and then continuing rolling downwards the slope so let's got the shot you're very language I wouldn't be there Jimmy Gigi okay yeah so when you land it so this is the shots - Janet say it from that it appears to go through a house yeah yeah luckily you bend it physics a little bit so it didn't go straight you went yeah in a curve so so it's just a crater yeah one of the craters he left behind you and there are many more as the car roll down yeah so that's what happened so as you went over the the cliff side what went through your head I mean were you conscious throughout I was aware that I was up that I was high that inevitably the car was going to come down and yeah because I was a moment of dread Oh gold I'm I'm gonna die and also I said whether the car was taking just such a beating I mean if you looked those craters that's a big hole which was that's just impact and it looks like this thing's been dropped from space to be about that big so yeah I was probably going through my mind was well this is it that was going to my mind I thought because in the last big accident the top gear days you weren't conscious of it I suppose whereas here you've actually got a chance to think I was conscious of that one I'm not history I was conscious of that one up to the point where it where that car went over at 300 miles an hour and at that point just before he dug in upside down then I was unconscious this one was conscious all the way through and yeah I was thinking well it can't I can't make this I mean you're aware of tumbling sky ground sky grand sky grand sky grand how many times he rolled over no that could've been once it could've been it doesn't know hundreds got don't know and I think it was it will have been in that that I've got injured and look it's just a bit of scratching my chin but really the the the main injuries his knee that of mest can he shows the skull no all I've got meant my youngest daughter when I came home and said that was it she said daddy you look like you've fallen over in the play because there's a big scar there and they've put a big plate in there to hold basically what happened was that leg I think I was braced against the bulkhead probably bracing myself because the car was rolling I mean he's not relaxing and at some point one of the impacts maybe when it left that huge crater that transmitted through my shin into this knee and basically collapsed the knee joint on the bottom on the top of the bottom bone so push that down by seven mil and I'm not a man who can afford to lose seven mil his legs first question was did you know boring there's no point putting more on one leg because I just go round something about I'm not breaking that word have you gone to the car yeah do that so yeah that's when I said it was in that process of it was like being in a tumble dryer for the breaks going downhill obviously I was conscious he was upside down and obviously brains telling you that's not a good place to be and to be fair I was also I did feel at that point that was lucky because the battering it took to leave craters that big and it does speak to the structural integrity of the thing the fact that when I set off bearing in mind when it's on its wheels before it's been thrown down a mountain even with me in it with the helmet and there's only about that it's a small car it's not massive so there's only about that much clearance which means that's if it collapsed by more than that as my head and then obviously hadn't but office because I was upside down I was hanging off the seat belt resting my head on crash I mean it was difficult to get out but the first ceased if you want to get out how I was wriggling and writhing to get out which is a bit difficult because you know had a normal seat belt on not a harness again amazing considering they had to get my helmet off which is difficult drag myself air by which point some people had arrived and I said I do remember saying to them dragged me by my arms not my leg because I think a broken that leg they pulled me away a little bit yeah especially for me it was surprising seeing that the first thing that he hit was the second round road under the one he took off for office oh and then the car rolled God knows how many times more we are still evaluating the data and all the footage but yeah the the carp hold up pretty well of course the bad thing is that it's caught fire you know there are many supercars and electric cars that catch fire just by sitting there and considering what our car went through and catching fire I think you know it's it's understandable of course we are not happy with that and we are improving the car and our batteries to not do that anymore and this data will help us a lot this accident will help us to understand better what happened but what nobody sees is when he went off that road what happened after that so there was a lot of rolling a lot of distance and a lot of flying involved in a lot of heart impacts which led to the fire which was still you know not spreading that fast that he couldn't get out so from that perspective I'm happy but of course we want to prevent some things like this happening in the future so what you're basically saying is you had the ultimate crash test dummy yeah but he didn't deliver enough data on 40 critical how many times did you roll I don't know I didn't count there's hundreds of people going up so we were queuing to go back down James and I now cars him behind me and the radio crackles into life and Phil the director says ah chaps that was really good ya know we're on our way back can I get one more run out of you we kicked off like a couple of petulant schoolboys cuz we were as far as we could said we've done it and laid into Phil saying and I regret it I'll Phil why are you making us do another you do know that's the one we'll crash on and in fact I passed him on the start man before I went up to get to the bottom of the island as I was pulling up to his dad and I said to [ __ ] off making me do this you know this isn't one I'm gonna crash on and then a minute later I feel so bad that's about the meanest thing I've ever done to another human was a total accident obviously didn't mean to but I mean he did turn up at the hospital to credit and he looked properly shaken so he owes me a bit of a kick on the shins from now on it's always the last one yeah but it is by definition to be fair that that's exactly what happened the last time huh so where would Jeremy and James in all this I think I read in the papers that James was screaming and Jeremy had kind of wobbly legs which is a bit of a weird conscious yes so James and I had gone up together that was the point of that rambling story so it was our last run of the day fill us for another one we did it I got at the top and crashed James of course was following up doing his run and arrived and so both him and Jeremy saw it from different angles they saw car row row row BAM bounce bounce bounce and if there was had it and then of course they saw them dragging our body me by my arms across the grass and both thought there are the little fellas bought the farm they came to being upset now those of us who spent a long time in the in the car world know that starting a new company is a huge challenge without some numpty celebrity throwing it off the side of the hill hello where do you go from here for us you know this is obviously really important the car I think has done well we believe that it has proven that it's safe unfortunately Richard had to prove that hey no worries me and as I understand it this was very much the end of the shoot Richard so you'd have plenty of time to experience the car what did you make of it it I'm not just saying this because you're here and you'll kick my bad leg I loved it I mean you know it was it is astonishing it's the first all-electric that that has proper ambitions in terms of range which is always the first question people ask but also performance it's what 1,200 horsepower goes off for motors one for each wheels and could in terms of torque vectoring it can every say was under seconds 100,000 Haggar be interrogated what's happening each wheel and distributing power accordingly it was breathtaking and it felt genuinely futuristic and Marland another interesting thing and I don't I'm just talking of too much weight because we you know made the film about it but things like the noises it made because it does and it for all of us has to you as well as a journalist we are gonna have to invent a whole new vocabulary whole new lexicon for the sounds of these things make because that the concept won't make some distinctive noises at different phases and stages I don't yet know whether it is that a good noise was it really bad noise I don't know and but there's all sorts of buzzes and words of whines and ticks and different sounds going to we have to learn how to describe and what they signify this is a electric car build by petrol hoods you know it's not by somebody who wants to get rid of cars or by somebody who thinks that's walking is the better way of transport we genuinely like cars we are we were petrol heads so we for example the prototypes had electric power strings but we really didn't like it so the production cars have hydraulic once the one is a good call yeah so you know it's it is electric but we were trying to use the advantages that electric power trains give to not just make an electric sports car but actually make the sports car better and that's what we wanted to achieve for example the four motors in a torque vectoring to bring it to the next level not just make it electric I mean the whole idea was to show that electric cars can be not just efficient and you know environmentally friendly and so on but I really believed that the electric motor is the perfect machine to power anything especially a sports car so I was wondering back then when I started to convert my gas-powered eater the BMW that was four years older than myself that's how I started to build like two cars I wanted to prove that electric cars can be also fast and fun and you know that enthusiasts don't have to worry about the future that they can also have fun with electric cars so the concept one is basically the embodiment of that it shows in one product what electric cars can do for motors to speed double clutch gearbox on each side in the rear for acceleration and top speed so you don't you know electric cars are usually one-trick pony that can accelerate fast but then lose bread soon after that we paid a lot of attention to thermal management so that you can do really a lot of laps on the racetrack without overheating you have decent range when you don't drive too fast when you drive fast that you still have enough range for a few laps on the on the track you can recharge it very fast like you have done in Switzerland with the fast charging stations so it basically shows what the electric cars can do we came out of Croatia where there was never a car industry so we couldn't hire somebody who has done this before we had to come up with everything ourselves we couldn't afford to pay suppliers to do stuff for us so we had to learn by doing by making mistakes so it took some time until we you know came up with a car that was on the level where we were happy with and we have learned a lot along the way when we designed the first concept one we were just six people now we are 250 people in the company and worked for the whole industry basically but the whole point of that car is to show what we as a company can do because we are basically a technology company helping other companies to build interesting products and Electrify it connected smart vehicles so our bits and pieces are in many other vehicles not just in hyper cars but also now trickling down to more mass use cars to premium and sports vehicles and so on so for us it's really important to show with the car what we can do but the real business for us is applying that technology to various different cars and applications so how many times in your life can you really get some genuinely new experience if you look at let's say a Lamborghini and Ferrari of course they are different but how much different maybe you know 5% can we put a number on that like mid-engined you know we 12 or v8 turbo and stuff like that here we make electric car fully electric with four motors with four gearboxes with two double clutch to speed gearboxes in the rear with torque vectoring that you can adjust to have front-wheel drive we will drive all wheel drive or anything in between where you can customize the driving experience exactly like you want with a push of a button and millions of other things that the electric powertrain gives you as opportunities and that's something genuinely new of course some people would never buy a gas-powered I like supercar some people will never buy an electric supercar and there are people that are new in the market because this is the first electric supercar you can buy but also there are many people who already have everything else and want something purely new and want to be part of this new movement of you know reinventing the car basically because right now the whole industry is going through a big change and we are part of that change not just with our car but that ends up in a lot of different products so we are very thankful for our customers because yes it's an expensive car it's very few of them but that's how you develop technology which then can come up into higher volumes and you know into more consumer based products and if people didn't know who and what the company were before I guess they they do now so what's what's next my PR campaign I've run for you very successfully so first of all I think I can't wait for the show to get out that you see how I require how an electric supercar comparison in the real world in the Alps on racetracks and so on whatever the guys have done compared to the I'd say top-of-the-line other conventional supercars and for us as a company the concept one is sold out we have a new model coming that will be produced in higher volume on a completely different level it will be even crazier more performance it's a global car so for global certification us obligation EU Malaysia and so on but the really big step for the company is getting from this 200 people technology and R&D and low volume company into a big supplier for the car industry so yes we are going to make our own supercars but the real business without which our company will never be able to survive is delivering this technology to other car manufactures and that's really the big step for where we are right now to get from 250 people to a thousand people and get into mass production [Music] obviously that was if not my first thought my first thought was to phone my wife and tell her I'd crashed whilst the air ambulance was landing to take me away because I needed to know I haven't done one knocking again my next thought pretty much was yeah what are we gonna do do you know where it's timed out if it was gonna happen and God probably hadn't for me and I wish you hadn't for you cuz I was about to say there were only eight of those cars has only seven now yeah makes it more rare and it was a customer's car yeah other customers all right so what are you gonna do you gonna build another car we said we'll build eighth so one less so it's now even more exclusive yeah yeah the remaining owners will be very happy yeah you've increased the value well that's it's just a service I provide so obviously we would far rather it hadn't happened but if it was gonna happen it's just worked out perfectly because we obviously we don't film any order necessarily that things go out and we've been busy for once if anything we're a little bit ahead with our homework or we'll certainly on time with it as we're usually not really not so what we've got left to shoot I can I can do what I have to do we could we can make it the short answer is we can without changing any of the films we'd planned without adjusting anything of the show this series we can we can complete it all so we're saying is this happened on day five like as you were driving the car oh yeah we made that films made I didn't do myself in the kitchen no and the reason for that is we do exciting difficult sometimes dangerous stuff all the time we are absolutely not gung-ho or frivolous or thoughtless about it otherwise we wouldn't survive one series it's what we do it's part of the show we don't we're not drilling junkies we're in our 40s and 50s in their case but it needs the thrills in it but we evaluate everything we're doing we take every precaution and we are also accepting of the fact that sometimes accidents happen I've had that two or three times in my life it's an accident and you can break it down and break it down and break it down and break it down and ultimately it's an accident it's happened as long as once it's happened you then mitigated against it getting worse so for instance somebody's got we've got to know those medics on-site there were there's an air ambulance there within minutes for our crew always we carry in if we're not at a controlled event where they're providing the cover we have a cold sheet on which will be details of the nearest hospital details of it to cover all of that is covered we don't want it to go wrong but if it does go wrong we've done everything we can to make sure it's not as bad not the worst outcome so no it won't it won't it won't change any of that I'm asked that a lot anyway since my crash of 10 years ago no because I wouldn't be doing it if I thought it was gonna kill me but equally you could walk out of here now and sleep in the car part one of one of the guys working here young Tom very fit sport a young man decided to take up basketball on his first game left in the air landed massive spiral fracture hurt ligaments of leg ruined you know fashion at least you didn't forget style it's done I haven't yet seen your head electric supercar exactly but yeah and we're not gonna it won't turn it won't stop us being gung-ho because we never have we're not I know that sounds boring truth of it is we're we're all grown-ups a lot of us with families all of us with careers we don't croc ourselves I mean what we were there doing because I haven't explained what we were in Switzerland for we were it was a film where we've got three supercars really but one of which was old-school Lambo or petrol one was the new NSX hybrid one was the remote concept one all electric so it's past present and future which is a rather neat and then we took them to practise Witzel and the three of us and we were having lots of adventures and japes and trips and and different ways of testing them but the final one of which was they'll climb of em so it was the very very last thing we had shot everything it was all in the cam it was all done I perhaps push things a bit I'm naturally fairly bouncy individual of the three of us but comparing us really is like you know comparing him an orangutan a panda and a shrew we're not really immediately comparable are we so I don't know I don't know but sometimes it's because you know I was thrown off a horse but that's because I saw that one was a bit more lively and I said to those don't worry chaps I could ride a horse and then I could sometimes it's [Music] it was I did I did read on internet some there was a Swiss hill climber had said a professional wouldn't have done it I didn't want to read that from him the professional wouldn't have done it really no racing drivers ever crashed are you sure actually so what the car is doing with the torque vectoring you want you tell the car where you want to go so this is your input to the system and the system does everything to point the car where you want to go so when you went into that left-hand corner you were way too fast and you you would turn the steering wheel more than the car can take more than physics can take with the with with the tires and the weight of the current zone so what the system did actually was to you're the car around where you want to where you want to have it so in order to do that it had to to get the back end of the car around it was no other way otherwise you would just have went straight it was not enough time you wanted to turn the car on the spot you know there was not enough asphalt to turn the car where he wants to have it so I think that the car did exactly what you asked is for you were just too fast I mean that resonates with me because on the little video clip it clearly goes into oversteer but the only thing I would say is the previous day when we'd been doing the drag racing there messing about on a little bit I like to drive around pretty hard I could not for the life of me provoke oh I could oh it would only understeer I'm gonna damn near understeer understeer over at gamma but it would not I could not get no matter how much I mean the thing generates a lot of grip but there's always a limit to mechanical grip and I was throwing it around this fairly gently but constant radius Bend at ever increasing speeds trying to get it in two hours to any wouldn't that's the job of the topic why did they suddenly do you were doing four runs before so the first run the top speed was 145 km/h and you went fast and faster every time so that the last run you did what or the last before the crash we did with 177 km/h which is about 110 miles per hour before the braking zone of that corner so there was quite a lot of speed and the first corner after the finish line the first time you went you took it 100 km/h the last time you took it 134 km/h so you got faster and faster every time you push the limits and wants to get faster so you know I just think very simply you got more and more confidence in the car and in the end a little bit team boss leaving the driver you were running out of Road you were going too fast so you wanted to get through the corner anyway so and I died over in more turning I wasn't some left what the car is the previous day if I turn that it would have just understand I so you you probably didn't naturally turn the steering wheel so much so what happened there in my opinion is so this is your input truth you have two inputs you have the steering and the brake and throttle pedal so this is what you tell the car this is where I want to go and this is what I want you to do so when you do this to the car it says okay you want me to go there but if there is not enough Road it will rotate the car more than the tires can handle so this is basically what happened it rotated it too fast but anyways this just meant that you went off sideways if it didn't do that you would just have gone straight maybe because where you try to do it is it just one direction right it's just going left all the time what you did here on the hill climb was you had there is why I left yeah right left so maybe you probably watch Scandinavian flick I mean it was under braking yeah look I crashed that that's what happened [Music]

Channel: DRIVETRIBE

Views: 7,724,402

Keywords: drivetribe, drivetribe app, jeremy clarkson, richard hammond, james may, motoring, cars, adventure, automobiles, speed, racing, top gear, Rimac, The Grand Tour, supercar, supercars, driving

Id: 18oAkxwYQh0

Length: 26min 32sec (1592 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/navfam46]

Stoked to see the actual crash when the new season drops in October but even more happy Richard is ok...after a crash....again!

[u/[deleted]]

"I can't drive and corners baffle me as much as straight roads".....we know Ricard.

[u/Kurvco]

Everyone's talking about the crash, but the Concept 1 seems like a genuinely intriguing vehicle. It's cool to see someone taking electric and trying to apply it in a more petrolhead manner. Plus, from what Hammond was saying, it seems like a genuinely good car. Can't wait to see the actual review.

[u/submitted_1_year_ago]

So, Hammond is now 7mm shorter? Jeremy is gonna love this.

[u/mapmaker22]

Thought that was a great interview and answered a lot of questions we all probably had. Rimac looks to have a bright future, if Hammond can manage to stay away haha

[u/oneburntwitch]

Reminds me of Buddy Holly and his guitarist, "Hope your plane crashes." "hope your bus goes off the road."

This is according to some doc about the crash that I watched a few years back.

[u/intelminer]

Does that mean he's coming on then?

[u/ManOfIronAnSteel]

The ending couple minutes is very interesting. The little debate going there about oversteer vs understeer

[u/simonhez]

Love the interview... Hate the camera work and video editing and that fucking stupid intro wtf...