THESE amazing pictures show the full horror of Richard Hammond’s 288mph jet car crash . . . and how lucky he was to survive.

The photos — released for the first time ahead of a new Top Gear series — show a tyre exploding into shreds before the dragster skids off an airfield runway amid a stream of smoke.

Richard, known as Hamster, was then sent barrel-rolling across grass at mind-numbing speed, throwing up thick clouds of dirt before landing on his head.

Dad-of-two Richard, 36, has little recollection of the smash, which left him critically ill with a serious brain injury. But imagining what happened, he said: “I will have taken a few deep breaths on the startline as the engine roared and my thumb hovered over the afterburner switch.

“Then I will have hit it and 10,000 horsepower will have hurled me towards the horizon and up to 280mph. The rest is, I’m afraid, history.”

Richard crashed in September while driving the jet-powered dragster at Elvington airfield, near York, for one of Top Gear’s high-octane stunts.

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Hammond’s dragster was going on a straight line when one of its tyre blew up.

The dragster began to veer off track.

And then it crashed.

These pictures make my hair stand. I’m amazed that Richard Hammond is still alive. He’s a really lucky chap and I’m glad that Top Gear has not been banned due to the accident. It’s too great a show to go to waste bin just like that.

But he has since made a remarkable recovery, helped by wife Mindy, 35, and daughters Izzy, six, and Willow, three.

And he will be in front of the cameras again with co-hosts Jeremy Clarkson and James May when the ninth series of the BBC2 show starts on January 28.

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Video footage of his shunt will be broadcast. And producer Andy Wilman said: “Richard is comfortable with it going out.

“He is convinced his crash helmet saved his life. So if just one kid who owns a motorbike watches this and thinks, ‘I get you. I have to play it safe,’ he will think it’s a good thing.”

Sun columnist Clarkson said: “I’ve joked about this accident for months, saying Hammond’s a c**p driver and can’t even go in a straight line.

“But I’ve actually seen the footage now and it’s a sickening crunch.

“You are just left with, ‘How the hell did anyone possibly get out of that alive?’ You cannot believe somebody lived through it and didn’t have a single cracked fingernail.”

Clarkson said Hamster — seen clutching his battered life-saving helmet on the cover of the new Top Gear magazine — is now “absolutely fine”.

He added: “He is happy for the film to be shown. It’s playground kudos for him and he hasn’t got any lasting damage.

“Everyone will want to see this footage. But if you don’t, Big Brother is on the other side.”

Richard’s brush with death has NOT turned him into a shrinking violet. Clarkson said: “We all got together in Austria last week for our next mission, which is a thousand times more perilous than the jet car. It was tremendous — the Old Firm was back.”

More adventures and crazy stunts for the folks at Top Gear. I’m sure they will step up the safety measures this time around. Check out the helmet that Richard Hammond is convinced what saved his life.

The helmet that saved Hamster’s life.

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