Never again? That was not on Richard Hammond’s mind when he saw the opportunity to jump behind the wheel of Rimac’s latest and greatest electric supercar. Despite being involved in a life-threatening accident in June 2017 with the infamous Concept One, The Hamster got back on the horse. Actually, 1,877 horses. In a new video for Drivetribe – which he co-founded with Jeremy Clarkson and James May – gets behind the wheel of Croatia’s fastest car ever.
The Nevera in question is #10 out of a total of 150 cars and sitting in the passenger seat is Rimac’s chief engineer and test driver. Given what happened the last time Hammond drove a Rimac, it’s an understandable precautionary measure to make sure The Grand Tour co-host isn’t involved in another nasty accident. Predictably, it looks as though the English journalist was a bit hesitant to drive off, but he eventually built up the courage to get going.
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Hammond is brutally honest in the video, taking full responsibility once again for what happened six years ago while The Grand Tour crew was filming in Hemberg, Switzerland: “I’ve never tried to dodge the blame for the crash. I’ve always fessed up. It was me. My excuse is it was so crazily, addictively fast, and so drivable and exploitable.” He admits he kept going even after crossing the finish line at the Swiss hill climb:
“No amount of computer wizardry and technical genius can defy physics, or more specifically gravity when some lead-footed Muppet throws it off a Swiss mountain.”
Lest we forget Hammond had already been involved in another horrible accident. While filming for a Top Gear episode in the UK at the former RAF Elvington airbase in September 2006, he was injured after crashing a jet-powered Vampire Dragster doing 319 mph (513 km/h).
The dragster crash was shown during season 9, episode 1, which originally aired on BBC on January 28, 2007. As for the Rimac accident, the footage was included in the first episode of the second series of The Grand Tour on Amazon Prime on December 8, 2017.