Hammond's 280mph crash - click on the 'Clip: Hammond crash' link to view.

THE new series of Top Gear included footage of the most talked about car crash since the one involving a certain Lady Diana.

Presenter Richard Hammond talks through the circumstances of the crash which nearly cost him his life with colleagues James May and Jeremy Clarkson on the BBC 2 show.

There is no little irony in Hammond's comments on the day when he warns viewers that they may be about to witness the 'biggest accident you've ever seen in your life', then after a first drive of the jet-engine powered car he says 'I just want to go faster' and later while in the cockpit of the car, 'I'm so alive', he says.

Hammond crashed at 280mph in the jet-powered car last September.

He has defended the decision to show the crash footage. 'We can't pretend it didn't happen - that we can hoon about all over Europe in supercars and punt jet-propelled dragsters up runways at 300mph without things going wrong. That's how it is in the world; things go wrong. And if I've learned one thing, it's that they can go wrong at the worst possible moment.'