Top Gear presenter suffers brain injury 

Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond suffered a significant brain injury in a high-speed crash in a jet-powered car while filming for the programme, a hospital spokesman said on Thursday.

"He has suffered a significant brain injury," the spokesman said.

"It is still giving cause for concern as it is still early after the injury. However, we are reasonably optimistic that he will make a good recovery."

The 36-year-old presenter was taken by air ambulance to the specialist neurological unit at Leeds General Infirmary after the accident on Wednesday.

Earlier on Thursday the hospital had said Hammond was in a serious but stable condition after some improvement overnight.

The presenter had been filming at a former Royal Air Force base near York, in what media reports said was an attempt to break the British land speed record of 300.3 miles per hour, when the accident happened on Wednesday afternoon.

A spokesman for the car's sponsor, Thule, said that although timers were in place to record Hammond's speed, it would not have qualified as an official record attempt.

Health and Safety Executive officials were on site investigating possible causes of the crash.

Co-presenters Jeremy Clarkson and James May have both visited their colleague in hospital.

"Obviously at this time both he and his family are the most important concerns we have," they said in a statement. "It must be devastating for his wife Mindy and his two utterly adorable children. Both James and I are looking forward to getting our hamster back."

Hammond is affectionately known as "The Hamster" by his legion of fans and is the butt of good-natured ribbing about his diminutive height by Clarkson and May.

He had to be cut from the wreckage of the vehicle which had veered off the track and rolled over, the BBC quoted one of the rescuers as saying.

"We were down there with Top Gear who were filming him trying to break the British land speed record," Dave Ogden, one of those involved in the rescue, told the BBC.

"On the previous run, the car had just gone over 300 mph but I am not sure if it had broken the record.

"They had just done one more run and were planning to finish when it veered off to the right."

Hammond had been able to talk to but was in distress, he added.

"He was regaining consciousness at that point and said he had some lower back pain. But he was drifting in and out of consciousness a little bit," Ogden said.

The Top Gear show, which tests and reviews cars, enjoys cult status and is broadcast to millions of people worldwide on BBC World.

Quentin Willson, one of the show's former hosts, said of Hammond: "He is a wonderful, unique and distinctive Top Gear presenter.

"He has brought an awful lot to the programme and his indefatigable energy, the fact that he tries absolutely anything once, may have been the reason that he has overstepped the mark a bit."