Top Gear star Chris Harris has claimed he warned BBC bosses about safety failings on the show ahead of Freddie Flintoff’s horror crash.
Flintoff, 46, was involved in the near-fatal incident while filming the motoring show in December 2022.
Harris, who joined the line-up alongside cricketer Flintoff and comedian Paddy McGuinness in 2016, recalled the horrific accident and took aim at the BBC for allegedly failing to take proper safety precautions.
Speaking on Joe Rogan’s podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, Harris recalled how Flintoff had not been wearing a helmet and alleged that he had not been briefed properly on the day before driving the vehicle at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome – home to theTop Gear test track.
The motoring journalist also claimed that the shoot had been “rushed”, stating that he did not have time to consult Flintoff about the vehicle he would be driving.
“He wasn’t wearing a crash helmet. And if you do that, even at 25, 30 miles an hour, the injuries that you sustain are profound,” he said. “I was there on the day. I was the only presenter with Fred that day.
“I wasn’t actually right by him, but I was close by. I remember the radio message that I heard; I always used to have a radio in my little room at the test track where I was sitting inside so I could hear what was going on.”
Harris continued: “And I heard someone say this has been a real accident here. The car’s upside down. So, I ran to the window, looked out and he wasn’t moving. I thought he was dead. I assumed he was, then he moved.”
Claiming that Flintoff had not been adequately briefed ahead of the shoot, Harris said that it was only “at the last minute” that they were informed he would be using a Morgan three-wheeler – which Harris called a “very difficult car”.
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Harris said there were two people on set that had driven a Morgan three-wheeler before: himself and a professional driver, both of whom, he claimed, were not consulted ahead of the shoot.
“No one had asked us anything about the car. They’d just gone on and shot it without us,” he said. “And I think if I’m looking in the mirror, I find it very difficult, even now, that Andrew [Freddie], who I loved to bits, a lovely man, he was a pro cricket player. He wasn’t an automotive guy.”
Harris said that due to the “rushed” schedule of the day, he was not given a chance to speak with Flintoff about “how he might approach a difficult vehicle”.
“And that was the one day that it went wrong,” he continued. “I find that very difficult to live with. And I feel partly responsible because I didn’t get the chance to talk to him.”
Harris went on to claim that he had warned the BBC three months prior to the accident that “someone’s going to die on this show” if safety protocols were not enforced.
“What was never spoken about was that three months before the accident, I’d gone to the BBC and said, unless you change something, someone’s going to die on this show so I went to them, I went to the BBC, and I told them of my concerns from what I’d seen as the most experienced driver on the show by a mile,” he said.
“I said, ‘If we carry on at the very least, we’re gonna have a serious injury and at the very worst, we’re gonna have fatality.’”
Harris said that during his time on the show he had seen “repeatedly too many times my two co-hosts didn’t have the experience I had in cars”.
“This is the critical thing. I’m qualified to make those decisions because I’ve done it for a long time. They weren’t. One of them is an actor-comedian. The other guy is a pro cricket player. Brilliant entertainers. They were great hosts, but their roles were to make people laugh,” he said. “And my role was to tell people what cars were like.”
The BBC declined to comment on Harris’s claims when contacted by The Independent, which has also reached out to representatives for Flintoff and McGuinness for comment.
Harris said that he felt as though the BBC had “left him to rot” by allegedly not heeding his warnings.
“It’s very difficult to live with that initially for me. When I knew, I thought I’d done the right thing. I’m not very good at that. I normally just go with the flow, but I saw this coming. I thought I did the right thing,” he said.
“I went to the BBC, and I found out really that no one had taken me very seriously. I did a bit of digging afterwards. The conversation I had with those people was sort of acknowledged. Then they tried to sort of shut me down a bit. And then they didn’t look after me at all. They just sort of left me to rot.”
Nearly two years after the incident, Harris said he is still “totally perplexed by the whole thing”.
“To actually say to an organisation, this is going to go wrong, and then be there the day that it goes wrong is a position I never expected to be in, and I never want to be in again,” he said. “It’s strange and pretty heartbreaking in many ways. I love that show.”
He said that after the crash, “everything went quiet” and he did not “have much contact” with the broadcaster.
“They had two inquiries into the accident commissioned, neither of which I had access to. I pushed very hard to have access to the second one and saw some of it,” he said. “A bit of me thought as the experienced driver, do the members of the public think that I didn’t do enough to protect Andrew? And Paddy as well.
“They both experienced other incidents on that show that I think were unacceptable. And that’s coming as someone who loves a bit of risk.”
Harris recalled another “dangerous” incident that occurred in Thailand when he and McGuinness competed in a go-kart race down a hill.
“I just looked at [the producers], and I said, it’s not a question of whether we get injured. It’s how injured we get,” he said. “I said to have an ambulance at the bottom because something’s going to go wrong.
“Sure enough, I broke something in my hand, and broke a finger or what have you. I always said I don’t mind breaking my hand if we get a BAFTA for it or an award, but this was just a sh** skit. It went on too much.”
Reiterating his point later, Harris said: “I look back, some of the stuff that we did on Top Gear, I look back, that was dangerous, visually dangerous, and definitely was in practical terms.”
Production was suspended for the “foreseeable future” in the wake of Flintoff’s accident, with the BBC deeming it inappropriate to continue. Flintoff received £9m in compensation.
While the BBC has declined to comment on Harris’s comments, The Independent was referred to the results of an internal investigation, published in November last year, which concluded: “While BBC Studios had complied with the required BBC policies and industry best practice in making the show, there were important learnings which would need to be rigorously applied to future Top Gear UK productions.”
The review does not cover the Flintoff accident, which received a separate investigation. Instead, it focused on series 32, 33, and the production of series 34 up to the crash.
Earlier this month, Flintoff shared a home video revealing his full facial injuries as part of his new BBC series Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams on Tour.
“I genuinely should not be here after what happened,” he said, revealing that he was unable to “just shake it off” after the crash.