\n The 56-year-old suffered serious injuries in the 320mph crash in 2006, while driving the jet-powered Vampire dragster during filming for the BBC motoring show at the former RAF Elvington airbase near York.\n<\/p>\n
\n In a post on Instagram, Mr Hammond – whose partner is from Oxford – said: \u201c20 years ago today, I came to an abrupt stop upside down in a Yorkshire field, convinced I was about to die.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cA front tyre had blown on the jet-powered dragster I had been driving at over 300mph.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI had pulled the lever to release the parachute and done my best to steer the car away from disaster, but disaster was, it seemed, my fate and having done everything I could do avert it, I gave myself over to that fate.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Hammond went on to say that he \u201cdidn\u2019t scream\u201d during the incident and said it \u201cwasn\u2019t frightening\u201d, adding that \u201cit simply occurred to me that the next thing on my to do list was to die\u201d.\n<\/p>\n
\n He added: \u201cI am only here today to note this anniversary and write these words because of the work of the many people involved in rescuing me from the shattered car, flying me to hospital and treating me there.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Mr Hammond went on to name members of the Air Ambulance and aftercare teams who helped him, saying he will be \u201cforever grateful\u201d to them.\n<\/p>\n
\n The TV presenter added: \u201cI have had so many lucky career breaks, so many amazing adventures around the world and am father to the two happiest, kindest, most wonderfully talented and loving daughters.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cBut I would have seen none of them if these people hadn\u2019t turned up to work that day and done their job.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThank you all from the bottom of my heart.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n The statement caused fans to rally around him, showing their support fort the presenter 20 years later.\n<\/p>\n
\n Social media content creator and car enthusiast Amy Oliver said: “20 years!?!? That\u2019s insane I remember this too well and the weeks afterwards we were all so happy to have you back!”\n<\/p>\n
\n Luke Penn, another prominent car enthusiast, added: “A fearless man you are Hammond! We all appreciate you being here.\n<\/p>\n
\n “The Top Gear and Grand Tour episodes gave so many of us joy and still does today. Smallest Cog show is also a pleasure to watch.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Another added: “As an entertainment journalist, I got to meet you at the helicopter factory in Torrance, California, and you said that you still had lingering after effects from that accident.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 56-year-old suffered serious injuries in the 320mph crash in 2006, while driving the jet-powered Vampire dragster during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":778879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-778878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}