Top Gear’s Chris Harris must have surgery on a hand injury sustained while racing a wooden go-kart with no engine.
He came a cropper while competing against co-host Paddy McGuinness in a traditional Formula Hmong race in Thailand in June for the motoring show.
Paddy, 49, said: “He’s still banged up. His hand is still not right.
“When he holds up his hand, I’m not sure if it’s his finger or thumb, but one of them points the other way. He will have to have an operation.”
They will be seen in Sunday’s new series roaring down a hill in the contraptions in helmets and body armour.
Chris, 47, tells BBC One viewers: “This is as grass roots as motorsport gets.
“The steering is by foot, the only fuel is gravity and the machines themselves are, let’s say, sustainably sourced.”
But Paddy insisted the cameras do not fully capture how fast they are travelling.
And he claims they were lucky not to get even worse injuries, adding: “When Chris came off, he was going at a fair speed and he hit that ground hard.
“There are no engines – there wasn’t even really a brake. When you finish, you think, ‘I’m glad we could walk away’. Chris got off lightly with that.”
During the race, Chris yelled: “I can’t steer it. I’ve got absolutely no control.”
Just before the car overturns, he shouts “Oh, no” and skids along the dirt track before rolling over and groaning.
When Paddy rushes up to him, Chris said: “My hand really hurts.”
Co-presenter Freddie Flintoff was absent from the race after catching Covid on the second day of filming 6,000 miles away in Southeast Asia.
The former England cricketer, 44, said: “It was a nightmare. You go all that way, then you just spend all those days sat in a hotel room doing nowt.”
Top Gear airs on BBC One this Sunday at 8pm.
