WARNING: CONTAINS VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES Former cricket legend Freddie is pictured days after accident covered in blood after horrific facial injuries from car accident
Freddie Flintoff shares shocking and graphic images of his Top Gear crash injuries
The full graphic details of Freddie Flintoff’s Top Gear car crash can now be seen by viewers in photos screened in his new documentary. The former England cricketer can be seen battered and bruised with blood on his face after he landed face first in the December 2022 accident.
The Disney+ film Flintoff also shows a close up of the three-wheeled car he was driving for the first time. Surgeon Jahrad Haq, who treated Flintoff, told the documentary the injuries were “very complex”.
He had a mixture of hard and soft tissue injuries, broken teeth, lost teeth and elements of the upper jaw bone that were also fractured and displaced.
Freddie Flintoff shortly after his horrific Top Gear crash(Image: DISNEY+)
Mr Haq added: “He lost a really significant portion of his upper lip – the skin and some of the underlying muscle – and also his lower lip.” Mr Haq said the injuries were in the “top five” in terms of severity of those he had seen during his career.
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The injuries were so bad that Freddie’s wife fought back tears when she saw him and warned their four children. She recalled in the documentary: “When I did see him, I walked in the room, and he was just in the bed, and he was bandaged up.
The TV star shares the images in his new Disney+ series (Image: DISNEY+)
“Like his eyes, I’ve never seen someone so scared in their eyes. And he just stared at me, and I just think he was looking at me to know how bad he was. So to be fair, I totally pulled myself together, and I just didn’t cry. I didn’t, I just said, ‘it’s fine. You’re gonna be okay. I can’t believe how amazing you look’.
“Before we got home, I did, I did call the kids, and I did say to them, ‘you’ve just got to be as strong as you’ve ever been. Your dad does look different at the moment. It’s gonna get better, but I don’t want you to look shocked and horrified, because that’s gonna knock him’.
“And that was hard, but Andy doesn’t know I’ve ever done that. I was so grateful to all those people, I still had a husband, the kids still had their dad.”
The dad-of-four is still recovering from the crash(Image: DISNEY+)
For his part, Freddie fears his face had been ripped off in the accident. He said: “I looked down and blood was coming down. And my biggest fear was I didn’t think I had a face. I thought my face had come off. I was frightened to death.”
The crash at Dunsfold Park in Surrey was in a Morgan Super 3 car with no roof which flipped.
The Disney+ documentary also shows the car in the aftermath of the accident. Freddie recalled: “It were a three wheeler, a reinforcement windscreen and a bar covering half me back. So I’m exposed.
Freddie’s documentary is out now(Image: DISNEY+)
“We’re probably doing about 40 or 45, they were showing me how to get the car going sideways, and the wheel came up at the front. It’s a funny thing rolling a car because there’s a point of no return, and everything slows down. It’s so weird.”
Flintoff’s co-host Chris Harris claimed in September 2024 he expressed safety concerns to Top Gear bosses before Freddie’s crash.
In response BBC Studios, which makes Top Gear, referred to an independent investigation in 2023 which found the show had complied with industry best practice, but that there were “learnings which would need to be rigorously applied” if Top Gear returned. The show is currently being rested after Freddie’s accident and bosses reached a financial settlement with him worth millions.
