Freddie Flintoff has shed more light on what caused the Top Gear crash that resulted in him being airlifted to hospital with horrific facial injuries. Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff required five hours of surgery after crashing a car during the filming of Top Gear at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome in 2022.
In new Disney+ documentary Flintoff, Freddie opens up about the horrific crash that left him fearing that his face had “come off” after being dragged across the tarmac. Speaking about the reason for the accident, Freddie says in the documentary: “I remember everything. I think about it now, back in the car, it were a three wheeler, a reinforcement windscreen and a bar covering half me back. So I’m exposed.
“We’re probably doing about 40 or 45, they were showing me how to get the car going sideways, and the wheel came up at the front.”
He adds: “It’s a funny thing rolling a car because there’s a point of no return, and everything slows down. It’s so weird.”
Freddie reveals that he realised that his best chance of survival was by going face down. “I remember hitting and my head got hit and I got dragged out, and the car went over, and I went over the back of the car, and then pulled face down on the runway for about 50 metres underneath the car and then it hit the grass and flipped back in.”
While Freddie’s wife Rachael recalls the moment she was told that her husband had been in an accident. “I got a phone call – ‘Andrew’s been in an accident in Top Gear but we don’t have much information. I think they might take him to the nearest hospital but it sounds like it’s just his teeth or something. I think everything is fine,'” she says.
“I put the phone down and I didn’t think much of it to begin with but it just kind of escalated very quick.”
In the documentary, Freddie’s surgeon Jahrad Haq speaks about the extent of the cricketing star’s injuries, revealing that they were “very complex”.
“His injuries, over the past 20 years of seeing Maxillofacial trauma, I would probably put in the top five,” he says. “He had a mixture of hard tissue and soft tissue injuries. Broken teeth, lost teeth, elements of the upper jaw bone that were also fractured and displaced.
“His soft tissue injuries were also complex. He had lost a really significant portion of his upper lip, the skin and some of the underlying muscle and also his lower lip.
Flintoff is available to stream on Disney+ from Friday 25 April.
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