Our Host Geoff Jeal

Geoff Jeal and his son Daniel.

Apprentice at Leyland Cars competition department, Geoff had a hand in building some of the last of the rally Mini Coopers as well as many other race and rally cars. Following Leyland Cars, he worked for a SAAB dealership that ran a race team of two cars in the National Rally Championships, taking up driving at that time in saloon car racing and rallying (with some success).

Geoff's wife Leslie.

Geoff joined Lotus in 1986 to help set up a race transmission department for the Formula 1 team. He moved on to the LT-5 program at the end of 1986, developing and building the engines and transmissions for the Corvette Indy and CERV3 show cars. Geoff worked extensively in the US during the climatic test trips of '87, '88, and '89, also working with the guys from Mercruiser and GM. He trained the end of line repairmen and the drive audit personnel at Bowling Green and was responsible for the sign off of the first 1980+ ZR-1's off the production line (drove every one!). Geoff left Lotus in 1991 to work on the Jaguar XJ220 development team at TWR. He was responsible for the power, emissions and drivability development of the car to production and was the sign off engineer for production. TWR followed the XJ220 with the Aston-Martin DB7, and Geoff was lead calibration engineer on the project (both European and Federal versions.) Since the DB7, Geoff has worked on several programs including the Olds IRL engine, the TWR/Heart V10 Formula 1 engine and one or two less grand projects.