Andrew Flintoff’s gruesome injuries from near-fatal Top Gear crash where he ‘thought my face had come off’ shown in grisly new photos from his Disney documentary

A tooth exposed where a chunk of his upper lip used to be, congealed blood coating a fusion of raw flesh and grit-dappled stubble, lacerations running like a tube map across his face.

These are the gruesome images of Andrew Flintoff’s disfigurement in the immediate aftermath of his life-altering Top Gear car accident, published for the first time today.

The graphic pictures taken upon his arrival at St George’s Hospital, Tooting, via air ambulance from the crash site of Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey, along with those during and after five hours of surgery on December 13, 2022, form part of Disney’s Flintoff documentary released on Thursday evening.

There are snaps of Flintoff, mouth wedged open, being operated on as doctors reconstruct his facial features.

One shows him like a rag doll with a patch to the right side of his mouth, a network of stitches across his cheeks, nose and forehead, puffy black eyes making him almost unrecognisable.

‘I got sent the picture, and I couldn’t look at it,’ admits his former England captain Michael Vaughan.

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES 

On his change in appearance, Flintoff himself says: ‘There are moments when I forget and I’m just living. It’s so nice. And then you just get a stark reminder. I get a feeling over my face because it’s all tight, and it’s different. I’ve got no teeth, so something will fall out my mouth as I am eating. Or I look in a mirror and it all comes back.

‘You know, you say that your face is your identity. How many times do we hear that? People saying it’s what’s inside that counts, it’s not how you look. B*****ks!’

Flintoff was driving a Morgan Super 3 three-wheeled sports car when it overturned and crashed off of the Top Gear test track in Surrey on December 13 2022 during filming.

The car is an open-topped motor capable of hitting 130mph – and the cricketer wasn’t wearing a helmet when the car flipped over.

Despite the car being equipped with roll bars designed to protect occupants in the event of turning over, Flintoff suffered severe facial injuries and broken ribs.

Flintoff made the harrowing admission that the severity of the pain suffered in the midst of the crash made him wish for death. 

‘I thought I was dead, because I was conscious but I couldn’t see anything,’ he said – realising seconds later his hat had fallen over his eyes.

But as he lifted it up, he looked down to see blood – and was terrified that he no longer had a face.

‘I thought my face had come off. I was frightened to death,’ he said.

‘After the accident, I didn’t think I had it in me to get through. This sounds awful: part of me wishes I had been killed, part of me thinks “I wish I had died.” 

‘I didn’t want to kill myself, don’t mistake the two things, but I was thinking “this would have been so much easier.”‘

The former England captain also revealed that the incident while filming for BBC TV show Top Gear in December 2022 replays over and over like a movie in his mind.

‘In some ways it would have been easier if I’d gone unconscious and then been unconscious for a week or two, and you wake up and the stitches are out, but I remember everything,’ he said.

‘We’re probably doing about 40, 45 (mph). They were just showing me how to get the car going sideways and the wheel came up on 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.’ 

Airlifted to St George’s Hospital in Tooting, Flintoff was being operated on soon after arrival by Mr Jahrad Haq, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon.

‘I was on call that day and received a phone call from the A and E consultant. A lot of the injuries we have are managed at a more junior level before escalating to the consultant, so I knew something was up,’ Mr Haq said.

‘His injuries overall, for the past 20 years of seeing maxillofacial trauma, I’d probably put in the top five.

‘He had a mixture of hard tissue and soft tissue injuries, broken teeth, lost teeth, elements of the upper jaw bone that were also fractured and displaced.

‘His soft tissue injuries were very complex. It’s very unusual that you lose soft tissue, that you lose skin, and he’d lost a really significant portion of his upper lip, the skin and some of the underlying muscle and also his lower lip.’ 

Flintoff also had to overcome facing his family in the aftermath of the shocking crash. He shares four kids – including promising young cricketer Rocky – with wife Rachael Wools, who he married in March 2005.

Speaking about how it impacted his children he said: ‘You want to be there for the kids and you don’t want to miss stuff, fortunately I’ve got four of them. 

‘I spent all this time with the three and a half year old and he won’t come near me, he’d get frightened of my face, frightened of me. 

‘That was heartbreaking.’

Rachael relived the moment she first heard of Flintoff’s accident, and how she had to prepare their kids for what she expected to be a difficult experience when first visiting him in hospital.

‘I got a phone call, Andrew has been in an accident in Top Gear but we don’t have much information,’ Rachael says on the documentary.

‘I think they might take him to the nearest hospital, it sounds like it’s just his teeth but we think he’ll be fine. I put the phone down and I didn’t think much of it to begin with, it just kind of escalated very quickly.

‘I wasn’t getting information, I didn’t know how he was injured and I just started grabbing all my stuff and thought I’m going to head to London and hopefully someone will tell me where he is.

‘When I did see him, I walked in the room he was in the bed and he was bandaged up, but his eyes, I’ve never seen someone so scared in their eyes. 

‘He just stared at me and I think he was looking at me to know how bad he was.

‘I did totally pull myself together and I didn’t cry and said “it’s fine you’re going to be okay, I can’t believe how amazing you look”.’

Rachael revealed she instructed their children not to react when the confronted with his injuries for the first time in an attempt not to knock him as he continued his recovery.  

‘Before we got home I did call the kids,’ she says.

‘You’ve just got to be as strong as you’ve ever been, your dad does look different at the moment.

‘It’s going to get better but I don’t want you to look shocked and horrified because that’s going to knock him. 

‘That was hard, and Andrew doesn’t know I’ve done that and I’m just so grateful to all of those people.

‘I still have a husband, the kids still had their dad and I’m very aware there are other people going through similar or very worse things without the help we had.

‘I think you saw none of Fred at all, he just zoned out didn’t want to speak to everyone. He just didn’t want to do anything. It was like the lowest I’ve ever, ever seen him.’

The psychological trauma suffered from the crash left Flintoff unable to leave his house for ‘six to eight months’, he admitted. 

‘The only times I was leaving the house was for medical appointments and surgeries,’ he said. 

And during his time away from the spotlight, Flintoff reflected on the extremities to which he was pushed during his time on TV.

‘That’s the danger that TV falls into — and I found out the hard way, eventually,’ Flintoff explained.

‘Everybody wants more, everybody wants that thing that nobody has seen before, everyone wants that bigger stunt. In some ways it’s, “Let’s have that near miss, because then that’ll get viewers”. Everything is about viewers. Always, always.

‘And I should have been cleverer on this, because I learnt this in sport as well… and was just treated like a piece of meat.

‘That’s TV and sport, I think that’s where they’re quite similar. 

‘You’re just a commodity, a piece of meat.’

Flintoff was involved in two crashes while filming Top Gear before his December 2022 ordeal, but managed to escape serious injury on both occasions.

He was not so fortunate the third time. Top Gear was put on hold for the ‘foreseeable future’ after Flintoff’s crash and is yet to return, while the former England all-rounder received a £9m payout from the BBC.

Flintoff presented Top Gear alongside Paddy McGuinness and Chris Harris, but stated in the documentary that he barely speaks to McGuinness anymore in the wake of his near-fatal crash. 

‘We’ve been in contact,’ he said. ‘When I saw Chris we hugged each other, he got upset and I got a little bit upset. 

‘I feel bad I haven’t been more in contact with him and Paddy. I think there were some comments that I’ve not spoken with Paddy for a while and part of it is for myself a little bit.

‘I hate the word triggering… but I’m worried about that. It’s also something that has stopped because of what’s happened to me. Their careers have been halted as well. 

‘So I feel bad for them and also it’s like what happened gets dragged up enough in my own head without adding to that (by seeing them).’

Flintoff has found solace in cricket during his road to recovery. The 47-year-old returned to the international set up thanks to close friend and ECB director Rob Key encouraging him to join the team, and later filmed a second series of the hugely successful BBC programme Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams. 

‘A mate of mine, Rob Key, who is actually my boss, known him for 30 years, he started inviting me to come and watch the cricket, test matches, but sit in a back room not in the crowd. I was wearing a full face mask for months.

‘I started getting back into it and started to find my feet a little bit. 

‘Ever since I can remember, from being a kid, cricket was a massive part of my life.’ 

Following the crash, Flintoff has returned to cricket in a coaching role, and is now working with England Lions following a stint with the Under-19s and senior team. Speaking to The Times, he has revealed how it felt to return to the cricket spotlight in Cardiff for a one-day international against New Zealand and the mental demons he battled.

‘That day in Cardiff, it took me 10 goes to leave my bedroom,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get out of the room.

‘In that hotel room I was so anxious and worried. I eventually went down to breakfast, sat down and chatted with Reece Topley and then Jos [Buttler]. I had to go back to my room to get my baseball mitt and flicker and I was waiting for the lift again and heard footsteps. I knew it would be Stokesy [Ben Stokes].

‘I didn’t really know him then. I’ve built a great relationship with him since, but I was anxious about that, standing in the lift with him. We were both stood there. He’s Stokesy and I am supposed to be like that, I suppose, but I didn’t feel like that.

‘I got on the team bus. Jonny Bairstow came and sat with me. I’ve known Jonny since he was young, from playing with his brother. In the dressing room, Joe Root came over, one of the best men you’ll ever meet, and everyone made me feel so welcome. Slowly but surely I started to find my feet. And sitting on the balcony and being pictured. Even the press were nice about me. It’s amazing what an accident can do.’