Tiff Needell

Timothy "Tiff" Needell (born 29 October 1951 in Havant, Hampshire) is a British racing driver and television presenter. He is a former co-presenter of Top Gear and current co-presenter of Fifth Gear.

Biography

Needell attended Ottershaw School followed by City University, London where he achieved an Honours Degree in Civil Engineering. Hired by George Wimpey & Co, his day job was as a Structural Design Engineer.

Racing career

Needell first raced at a driving school at Brands Hatch in 1970. He progressed to Formula Ford, his progress assisted by the use of a Lotus 69 FF he won in an Autosport magazine competition. He later sold his Lotus and used the money to buy and race an Elden Mk10. Needell's Formula Ford period culminated in his acquiring a Crossle 25F with which he won the Kent Messenger FF Championship after competing for only half of the remaining season. This success landed him a partly paid drive in the Formula Ford 2000 Championship in a Hawke chassis provided by McKinstry Racing. Needell was completely dominant in that car and series which provided him with the springboard into Formula 3. The remainder of the 1970s saw Needell as a front runner in the British Formula 3 series and then in the Aurora British Formula One championship. In 1979 he was unable to graduate to the F1 World Championship due to the lack of the correct licence, but he was back in 1980, driving two Grands Prix for Ensign, qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder. However, he had an engine problem and did not finish the race. He subsequently failed to qualify for the Monaco Grand Prix.

Fifth Gear

Fifth Gear is a British motoring television magazine series. Originally shown on Channel 5 from 2002 to 2011. Since 2012 the show has only been available on limited distribution platforms such as Discovery from 2012 to 2014 and History since 2015 alongside ITV4 meaning the show is returning to freeview for the first time in four years after it ended on Channel 5 in 2011. The show is currently presented by Tiff Needell, Vicki Butler-Henderson and Jonny Smith. Fifth Gear's rival shows are BBC Two's Top Gear and Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May's 2016 Untitled Amazon motoring show for Amazon Video.

Fifth Gear was first broadcast on 8 April 2002 as 5th Gear, and as a continuation of the original incarnation of the BBC show Top Gear, which was cancelled in 2001. Top Gear was relaunched later that year; Channel 5 originally wanted to carry on using the Top Gear name, but the BBC refused. Several of Top Gear's ex-presenters, including Quentin Willson, Tiff Needell, and Vicki Butler-Henderson, were hired by Channel 5 to present the series. The show's name was restyled as Fifth Gear in 2005.

Top Gear

Top Gear and similar may refer to the following:

Television productions

Video games

Gear

A gear or cogwheel is a rotating machine part having cut teeth, or cogs, which mesh with another toothed part to transmit torque, in most cases with teeth on the one gear being of identical shape, and often also with that shape on the other gear. Two or more gears working in a sequence (train) are called a gear train or, in many cases, a transmission; such gear arrangements can produce a mechanical advantage through a gear ratio and thus may be considered a simple machine. Geared devices can change the speed, torque, and direction of a power source. The most common situation is for a gear to mesh with another gear; however, a gear can also mesh with a linear toothed part, called a rack, thereby producing translation instead of rotation.

The gears in a transmission are analogous to the wheels in a crossed belt pulley system. An advantage of gears is that the teeth of a gear prevent slippage.

When two gears mesh, and one gear is bigger than the other (even though the size of the teeth must match), a mechanical advantage is produced, with the rotational speeds and the torques of the two gears differing in an inverse relationship.

Royal Automobile Club

The Royal Automobile Club is a British private club and is not to be confused with RAC, an automotive services company, which it formerly owned.

It has two club houses: one in London at 89–91 Pall Mall, and the other in the countryside at Woodcote Park, Surrey, next to the City of London Freemen's School. Like many other gentlemen's clubs in London today, the Royal Automobile Club now permits women to be members.

History

It was founded on 10 August 1897 as the Automobile Club of Great Britain (and, later, Ireland). The headquarters was originally in a block of flats at 4 Whitehall Court, moving to 119 Piccadilly in 1902.

During 1902 the organisation, together with the recently formed Association of Motor Manufactures and Traders campaigned vigorously for the relaxation of speed limits claiming that the 14 mph speed limit imposed by the Locomotives on Highways Act 1896 was 'absurd' and was seldom observed. The organisations, with support from the Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, had considerable influence over the forthcoming Motor Car Act 1903 which originally proposed to remove all speed limits for cars while introducing the offence of driving recklessly. In the face of considerable opposition a speed limit of 20 mph was retained in addition to the creation of the offence of driving recklessly, dangerously or negligently.