Freddie Flintoff crash: Grand Tour's James May criticises public reaction to the Preston star's crash

James, who hosts Amazon Prime’s The Grand Tour alongside his former Top Gear colleagues Jeremey Clarkson and Richard Hammond, was speaking to the Metro about their upcoming ‘Eurocrash’ special.

However, during the interview, the 60-year-old also called out Top Gear fans over some of their comments about Flintoff's recent crash, with the Preston star having taken over the presenting of the show alongside Paddy McGuiness and Chris Harris in 2019.

James had himself crashed into a wall at 75mph while filming The Grand Tour a few months prior but says the two incidents seem incomparable.

Speaking about Freddie’s crash, James said: “Dunsfold is a remarkably safe place to drive around, there isn’t really anything to hit and they do take all the safety and stuff very seriously. They even have fire engines on standby and ambulances at Dunsfold. So it’s all a bit of a tragedy, and it’s obviously much worse than we first thought.

“But one thing I would say, I’ve noticed this on Twitter, it’s died down a bit now, but for a while there were people saying, ‘Top Gear’s ended because Freddie Flintoff bashed himself up and why don’t you three go back and rescue and save it.’ I wanted to say to people, ‘Look, the bloke’s hurt himself.’

“It’s not an opportunity for you to gloat or say ‘Oh, I prefer the other team.’ You could possibly just say, ‘Get well Freddie,’ or something nice like that, rather than rejoicing in it. It’s a while since it happened and he’s obviously still not completely better. So it’s not like my tunnel crash, a couple of weeks later, I was okay, no lasting damage. That’s obviously something a lot more serious. So good luck to him.”

What happened to Freddie?

The former professional cricketer was taken to hospital after being involved in an accident while shooting at Top Gear’s Dunsfold Aerodrome test track in Surrey on December 13. The crash left the Preston-born star with broken bones, and reported psychological trauma.

In March, it was reported that filming of the new series had been halted due to the crash, and it was unlikely Flintoff would return when filming resumes.

You can read more about the crash here.