Without being there, it is not possible to make a sensible judgement on how this flight was conducted.
Flying with a cameraman shooting from a side door creates a set of flight restrictions and pilot pressures that in the past have been significant factors in accidents where controlled flight into terrain was the cause.
To date there have been, by comparison very few accidents due to controlled flight into terrain involving nose mounted gimbals. I think only one (flying too low over heaving seas)
In Top gears latest escapade, a nose mounted gimbal would have provided more sense of speed and enabled shots looking left right and backwards at 120 knots, probably a good choice if shooting sports cars!
But a $200? per day Romanian cameraman is a lot cheaper than a $2000 per day stabilised camera.
If there had been no sign of the cameraman (as is the case when using a gimbal) Clarkson would have said what a great job the Romanian
pilot was doing
Mickjoebill