Jeremy Clarkson makes ‘sad’ admission about Top Gear’s fate following Flintoff crash

Flintoff received £9m in compensation as a result of his injuries. The incident led the BBC to suspend Top Gear production for the “foreseeable future”, deeming it inappropriate to continue.

Clarkson, who presented the show with Richard Hammond and James May between 2002 and 2015, now feels that it is needed now more than ever due to the rise in popularity of electric cars.

“It would be sad if it never came back, that would be very sad,” the 65-year-old told The Times. “There’s room for a car programme at the moment because cars are changing so fast and electrical cars are coming along and nobody really understands what’s a good one and what isn’t.”

Clarkson added that “motoring journalism was important” in the 1950s, as “you needed people to steer you through the complexity”. While he admits that the brand of journalism became outdated, he now believes “it’s necessary again because [when] I look at a kilowatt per hour car, I have no idea what that means”.

However, he has no intention of fronting any potential reboot as “I just don’t understand or like electrical cars, so I wouldn’t be interested in doing it”.

After he was sacked from Top Gear for assaulting a producer, Clarkson moved to Amazon with Hammond and May for the Prime Video series The Grand Tour, which premiered in 2016.

That show’s final episode aired in September 2024 and also saw the conclusion of Clarkson’s 22-year partnership with his co-hosts.

“After 36 years of talking about cars on television, I’m packing it in, because I’m too old and fat to get into the cars that I like and not interested in driving those I don’t,” he told The Sunday Times last year.

“What this means, of course, is that my 22-year partnership with James May and Richard Hammond is now over.”

Clarkson said it “makes the three of us happy” that their working relationship did not disintegrate “in a blizzard of outrage and tabloid headlines”, but was “landed safely and gently”.

“Was it sad when the director called, ‘That’s a wrap,’ for the very last time? Yes, it was. Especially as some of the crew had been with us when we were there before.

“People think of Top Gear and The Grand Tour as being James, Richard and me. But it isn’t. We’ve had the same crews for years. We’ve all grown up together”.

Meanwhile, Flintoff has reflected on the crash and its aftermath in a new Disney+ documentary, Flintoff. The 47-year-old admitted he initially thought he “was dead” after a Morgan Super 3 three-wheeled sports car flipped over on the Top Gear track at Surrey’s Dunsfold Park Aerodrome and claimed that “it would have been so much easier” if he had died.

“After the accident, I didn’t think I had it in me to get through,” the sportsman said. “This sounds awful: part of me wishes I had been killed. Part of me thinks, ‘I wish I had died.’

“I didn’t want to kill myself – don’t mistake the two things – but I was thinking: “This would have been so much easier."'

Flintoff is available to stream on Disney+ in the UK and Ireland now.