Richard Hammond got behind the steering wheel of a Rimac six years after he crashed another one during a hill climb event in Saint Gallen, Switzerland. He now takes it along the winding roads of the Swiss Alps again.
It was June 10, 2017, when former host of The Grand Tour Richard Hammond lost control of the Rimac Concept One in a corner. The car slid off the road, broke through the barrier, and rolled over several times down the hill.
It came to a stop and burst into fire. The left side door popped open during the rollover and Hammond luckily extracted himself from the wreckage before the fire. He suffered a knee fracture and was airlifted to hospital but returned to the show two months later.
Six years later, he gets on board another Rimac for the first time since the horror crash. This time, it is the Nevera, the car that just broke the speed record for driving in reverse.
"Please don’t let Richard Hammond test drive this! For his sake…"
"Keep it out of Hammond's hands!”?“I hope it is not driven by Richard Hammond."
"Another Rimac for Hammond to crash!"
This is how the video uploaded on the Drivetribe YouTube channel starts, all with reference to the crash from 2017. That's until Mate Rimac, the founder of the company, gives a phone call and says "You know what? Let's do it!"
The video then shows Richard Hammond, who ironically calls himself a "crash test dummy," right next to Rimac's most precious: the Nevera. It's the car with 1,888 horsepower (1,914 PS) and 1,741 pound-feet (2,360 Newtons meter) of torque. It's the car that smashed record after record. It hits 100 kph (62 mph) from a standstill in 1.85 seconds. Yes, just 1.85 seconds.
Hammond pulls out of a plastic bag his lucky watch, the Rolex he was wearing when he last drove a Rimac. When he gets on board, he remembers that the last time he had contact with a Croatian supercar, he was upside down.
Hammond admits that the Rimac team was nervous about this new experience and asked him to bring something for good luck. No one can blame them, right? When they said “something for good luck,” they surely did not refer to his watch, but to the company’s Chief Engineer and test driver, who sat right next to Hammond all throughout the drive.
Hammond goes through all the necessary adjustments to find the best position behind the steering wheel. He starts off with the speed of an exhausted turtle and somewhat fakes fright and shows precaution. Now he drives car number 10 out of a total of 150.
Hammond goes into a 'no one had heard about Rimac until I crashed one' kind of attitude but took full responsibility for the crash. He says he owes his life to the way the Croatian engineers developed the carbon fiber monocoque of the Concept One that he crashed back then.
The one in the Rimac concept car was not the only tarrying crash Richard Hammond has been involved in. Before rolling over with the Rimac, he crashed while doing 319 mph (513 kph) in a jet-powered Vampire Dragster.
He was then shooting an episode of the second series of the Grand Tour for Amazon Prime at the former RAF Elvington airbase. He spent two weeks in a coma and doctors gave him a slim chance of survival.
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