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Malcolm Pittwood, the team manager of Primetime Landspeed Engineering, which owns Vampire, said: “Richard was euphoric. He was gradually increasing speeds to ones he had not attained in any super car, getting faster each time.”

It emerged yesterday that James May had been due to film the jet-car piece but swapped with Hammond several weeks ago, apparently because of diary clashes.

Experts have suggested that the crash may have been caused by driver error, mechanical failure or a sudden gust of wind across the airfield during the car’s final run.

Superintendent Martin Deacon, of North Yorkshire Police, said that the organisers of the high-speed challenge should have done a full risk assessment before filming began.

The wreckage of the vehicle was moved to a secret location yesterday for examination. Computer equipment used to time the car has also been taken away for investigation.

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Keith King, of the Health and Safety Executive, said that the joint inquiry would look in detail at the BBC’s preparation and planning for Wednesday’s event. “One would expect the BBC to have organisational arrangements and risk assessments for dealing with production-related activity,” he said.

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 the BBC has a duty to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of its employees. Employers are required to undertake risk assessments.

Broadcastnow, a website for the industry, said it had been told by a source who works on Top Gear that some crew members had health and safety concerns about the show that they planned to raise at a production meeting yesterday.But a BBC spokesman said: “If people were going to raise health and safety issues at this meeting it is the first we have heard of it.”

The BBC refused to comment on how much training Hammond had been given. “The circumstances of this accident will be fully investigated by the BBC and we will be fully co-operating with any investigation by the police and the Health and Safety Executive,” a spokesman said.

Others likely to come under investigation are Primetime, the owner of the car, and Elvington Park Ltd, the company that owns and let the runway to the BBC crew. Vampire and its sister car, Split Second, are for sale and Primetime hoped to use the Hammond film, which was to be shown in the next series of Top Gear, as a shop window for the vehicles.

In 1999, MPs claimed the series was “obsessed with acceleration and speed”.

Clarkson paid tribute to Hammond after visiting him in hospital. “I would just like to say how heartened Richard will be when I tell him just how many motorists on my way here wound down their windows to say they were rooting for him,” he said.

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