Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson & Richard Hammond BANNED from driving

Top Gear won’t be filming in France for the rest of the year after Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond were banned from driving for speeding.

It’s an astonishing claim from a man with a lead right foot, but Jeremy Clarkson claims to have never been nicked for speeding.

But that claim is something Jeremy will have to qualify by location in future after the French ‘Rozzers’ nicked both Clarkson and Richard Hammond on a Top Gear drive in France last month.

How we all managed to miss this little snippet of news when Jeremy revealed it in his column in The Sun last month, we don’t know. But we did.

It seems Messrs Clarkson and Hammond were cruising along the péage at a not unreasonable pace – Clarkson in an Aston Martin Vanquish and Hammond in a Porsche GT3 – when they were nabbed at the toll both by the French Revenue gatherers for exceeding the speed limit.

The Top Gear duo were zapped at 141kph and 143kph respectively (the French speed limit is 130kph) so expected a silly French fine and a slap on the wrist.

Unfortunately, it seems that particular stretch of almost empty péage had a 90kph limit, so the French Traffic Rozzers, tasked with finding a source of income for the penniless Francois Hollande government, emptied the boys’ wallets and issued a perfunctory three month driving ban in France. Effective immediately.

Fortunately for Hammond and Clarkson they had back up from the TG film crew, otherwise they’d have been stuck in France without funds or transport.

Which means a new Top Gear Top Tip: Avoid visiting France.

Source: Final Gear (via WCF)