Richard Hammond has admitted his fears for his daughter after she found herself in a high-speed car crash two decades after his own.
The former Top Gear star's eldest daughter Izzy was racing at Formula E’s Evo Sessions event in Saudi Arabia earlier this year when she took a corner too fast and smashed into a wall.
And while the 25-year-old reassured her 357,000 Instagram followers that she was “alive” – even if the car wasn't – Richard's own brush with death while filming Top Gear in 2006 has led the presenter to admitting he's a “little uncomfortable” with his daughter's career.
“It’s a little uncomfortable because I know from personal experience that things can and do go wrong,” the 56-year-old told the Metro.
“I’m a father, like any other father. I don’t want to see my little girl hurt, but I don’t want to hold her back from opportunities that present themselves. She’s carving her own career, so I can sit back and watch her do that and only applaud.”
Izzy's crash occurred at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, where she was competing in an influencer-focused competition that sees was racing in the Duals stage of the influencer-focused competition, which sees celebrities and online personalities compete for the fastest lap on behalf of professional teams.
Competing for Team Senor Frogs, Izzy was about a minute into her lap when she drove too fast around a corner about a minute into her lap and hit the barrier.
The car was left in smithereens, with pieces scattered across the track, while Izzy emerged unscathed and was checked over by medical staff.
Speaking after the event, Izzy, who is the eldest of Richard and his ex-wife of 28 years Amanda Hammond, explained: “I saw the wall coming and knew I was going to enter it at speed.
“It wasn’t a small crash. If you’re going to crash, you’ve got to really crash,” she said, adding that the car was “not in one piece”.
On Instagram afterwards, she wrote: “How did I do it? I don’t think I had enough heat in my tyres, so I was trying to brake and I was trying to turn with no heated tyres so it all went a little bit t**s up and I hit the wall with 24Gs.”
Izzy revealed that she thought of her father Richard, who has been in multiple car crashes, in the seconds after hitting the wall.
“My first thought when I was sat in that wall was, oh my God, everyone’s watching, my dad’s watching,” she said.
Her dad, The Grand Tour star Richard, sustained serious head injuries and was left in a coma for two weeks after he crashed a jet-powered dragster at nearly 320mph in 2006.
Then, in 2017, Hammond had to be airlifted to hospital following a terrifying crash while racing a £2 million supercar, after which he apologised to his family from his hospital bed for being a “colossal idiot”.
