A CAR was driven at high speed down a narrow lane before crashing into a cornfield and going up in flames.

Witness Martin Brain said the blaze could have easily turned into a wildfire like the one on the Malvern Hills earlier this summer, due to the hot weather and dry conditions.

The 58-year-old was in his back garden on Ivy Lane, Bretforton, when he heard a car tearing down passed the house at an estimated 60mph before coming off the road.

He said he and his wife Debbie had just finished watching TV show Casualty on Saturday night before the crash somewhere between 10 and half past.

“We heard it coming – we were sat in the garden, not far from the road,” he said.

“It went down the lane and the next thing we heard the tyres exploding from the heat.

“Soon after the police and fire brigade came flying down to the scene.”

Mr Brain, who has lived in the village near Evesham for two years, said the Citroen’s occupants fled the scene and emergency crews blocked off the road for a couple of hours.

“They kept us all a fair distance away,” he said. “But there was 30 or 40 people outside – it was like a street party.”

He said there’s a “sharp turn to the right” at the bottom of Ivy Lane where the car had come off the road.

“If you go left you get onto a mud track for horses but if you go right you go towards Honeybourne Road, which is what I expect they were trying to do and misjudged the turning,” he continued.

Mr Brain said three police cars were at the scene and a fire engine, with firefighters having to re-fill the tank of water near his home to finish putting out the blaze.

He believes the passengers fled the scene and that the car was stolen.

“The engine was gone, there was nothing left,” he said, after venturing down the next day. “The steering wheel had melted. I had trouble working out what sort of car it was at first. I think it was a black Citroen C2.”

He said there had been the same type of car with a for sale sign in the window parked nearby on Station Road for about a month.

A spokeswoman for Hereford and Worcester Fire said: “Crews were called to an abandoned car in a field, which was on fire.

“One appliance from Pebworth attended and crews used two breathing apparatus and one hosereel jet.”