The BBC has pulled Top Gear off the air after Freddie Flintoff’s crash
After a whopping 46 years, the broadcaster has made the decision to retire the show.
The BBC has made it known that Top Gear won’t be gracing our screens “for the foreseeable future” post the 2022 incident involving presenter Freddie Flintoff. The decision, as stated by the BBC, is to “rest the UK show.”
Flintoff, the erstwhile England cricket skipper turned broadcaster, faced a high-speed crash at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome in Surrey last December, leading to his hospitalization via air ambulance. This location has been a regular feature on the BBC show since 2002. Notably, this wasn’t his first mishap, as he had previously lost control of a motorised trike at 124mph in a race with co-hosts Chris Harris and Paddy McGuinness.
The call to pull the motoring show off air follows the delivery of results from an external BBC health and safety investigation, which won’t be made public. Another health and safety report analyzing earlier series of Top Gear highlighted “significant learnings” regarding the show’s production.
Apologies were extended to the presenter by the BBC post the 2022 accident, and a reported financial settlement of around £9m was reached. Flintoff has been seen publicly with facial injuries, and according to his legal team speaking to the Sun, he continues to recuperate from “life-altering injuries.”
Flintoff isn’t the first presenter to suffer a serious accident on the show. Back in 2006, Richard Hammond, part of the earlier trio with Jeremy Clarkson and James May, faced a harrowing ordeal at York’s Elvington airfield. He sustained a severe brain injury when the dragster he was driving spun out of control at a blistering 288mph. The incident occurred during an attempt to break the British land speed record. Hammond spent a challenging fortnight in a coma following the accident.
Flintoff came aboard as a host for BBC One’s Top Gear in 2019, alongside McGuinness and Harris. Their latest series drew an impressive average viewership of 4.5 million.
The BBC assured its commitment to Freddie, Chris, and Paddy, pivotal to the show’s revival since 2019. They mentioned ongoing projects in the pipeline for each of them. While acknowledging disappointment for fans, the decision to pause the show was deemed necessary.
They clarified that all other aspects of Top Gear, like international formats, digital content, magazines, and licensing, remain unaffected during this hiatus.
