Former Top Gear presenter and cricketer Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff has said his recovery from the intense set was filled with nightmares and anxiety.

While details of the on-set accident remain secret, Flintoff has detailed the aftermath and recovery experience in his cricket-focused television series Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams, according to the BBC. The 46-year-old presenter revealed that the incident, which reportedly took place on the Top Gear test track at the wheel of a Morgan Super 3, changed his life forever.

“I am who I am now. I am different from who I was. That’s something I’m going to have to deal with for the rest of my life. Is it better? No, it’s different,” Flintoff said in an upcoming episode of the docuseries, which was filmed earlier this year.

According to the Independent, Flintoff suffered serious facial trauma when the Morgan he was driving overturned and skidded at high speed during filming. It has been claimed that a Top Gear crew member was also in the car at the time of the accident. Footage of Flintoff after the crash shows scars on his chin and under his nose, and the presenter confirms that he underwent a series of surgeries following the incident and wore a full-face mask and goggles during his months-long recovery.

“I wanted to shake it off and say ‘everything is fine’ but it wasn’t,” Flintoff explained in the documentary. “As much as I wanted to go out and do things, I couldn’t. I struggle with anxiety. I have nightmares, I have flashbacks. It was very difficult to deal with.”

“It was a pretty bad accident. It’s shocking,” Flintoff’s son, Corey Flintoff, told the Daily Mail after the accident in 2022. “We’re all in shock but we just hope he’s OK.”

According to the BBC, following Flintoff’s accident, Top Gear production was halted in early 2023, with the show ultimately being cancelled for the foreseeable future in November 2023. The network also apologized to Flintoff and reportedly agreed to a severance package of around $11.5 million. These two incidents, reminiscent of Richard Hammond’s near-fatal accident during the filming of The Grand Tour, are a reminder that performance driving can be incredibly dangerous, even under the right circumstances.

The new season of Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams will air on the BBC on August 13.

Hailing from the Pacific Northwest, New Yorker Emmet White has a passion for all things cars, bikes, airplanes and motorcycles. After learning to ride at age 17, Emmet worked in the motorcycle industry before joining Autoweek in 2022 and Road & Track in 2024. Alternate side parking issues have kept his fleet at a moderate level, and he street parks a 2014 Volkswagen Jetta GLI and a BMW 318i E30 in his Queens community.