Pacific Racing

Pacific Racing

File:Pacific Racing logo.gif
Full name	Pacific Grand Prix (1994) Pacific Team Lotus (1995)
Base	Thetford, United Kingdom
Founder(s)	Keith Wiggins
Noted staff	Adrian Reynard Frank Coppuck
Noted drivers	Paul Belmondo Bertrand Gachot Giovanni Lavaggi Jean-Denis Délétraz Andrea Montermini
Formula One World Championship career
First entry	1994 Brazilian Grand Prix
Races entered	33 (22 starts)
Constructors' Championships	0
Drivers' Championships	0
Race victories	0
Pole positions	0
Fastest laps	0
Final entry	1995 Australian Grand Prix

Pacific Racing was a Formula One team from Great Britain. The team took part in two full seasons, 1994 and 1995, entering 33 Grands Prix.

Origins and success in lower formulae

The team was founded by former mechanic Keith Wiggins in 1984, to race in the European Formula Ford Championship, with Norwegian driver Harald Huysman and Marlboro backing. Huysman won both the European and Benelux titles. On Huysman's advice, Pacific entered Bertrand Gachot in British Formula Ford with a Reynard in 1985. The following year, Gachot, also part of the Marlboro World Championship team, won the Formula Ford 2000 crown for Pacific. Marlboro stayed with Wiggins' team in FF2000 in 1987, winning the British title with J.J. Lehto.

In 1988, Pacific entered the British F3 Championship with Lehto and a Reynard car, and won the title on their first attempt. Wiggins did not want to stay in F3 and moved up to Formula 3000, once more in association with Reynard and Marlboro. However, Lehto and Eddie Irvine's season was disappointing and the tobacco company's support moved to rival DAMS in 1990. The team returned to form in 1991, taking Christian Fittipaldi to the F3000 crown.

Formula One

Having won in every junior category it had participated in, by 1992 Wiggins was determined that Pacific Racing would make the step up to F1 for the 1993 season, in the process renaming the team as Pacific Grand Prix. Lacking an in-house engineering staff and conscious of how limited his timescale was, Wiggins contacted F3000 constructor Reynard Racing to design and build the new PR01 chassis, hoping to benefit from several years of research and development that Reynard had invested in their recently scrapped in-house F1 project. Unfortunately for Pacific, the Rory Bryne-lead design team had gone to Benetton at the end of 1991 and Reynard had sold the design (still in form of paper drawings) to Ligier. The small PR01 design team, working at Reynard but nominally employed by Pacific to conform to FIA Regulations, were forced to start a new design based on what little of the Reynard F1 research remained and utilizing a number of minor components from Reynard's F3000 chassis in an attempt to constrain costs. With their roots in the same project, the resulting Benetton B193, Liger JS37 and Pacific PR01 shared the same slab-sided, raised-nose profile that later became standard in Formula One.

File:Pacific Racing 1994.jpg

Bertrand Gachot leads Paul Belmondo in practice for the 1994 Pacific Grand Prix.

Unfortunately, a recession and resulting failure of investors to pay up postponed their 1993 entry and they were unable to enter F1 until 1994. The year was a disaster. Paul Belmondo and former Pacific driver Bertrand Gachot started the season as drivers, with Oliver Gavin testing. The PR01, designed for the 1993 season, had undergone none of the vital wind tunnel testing required to refine the car's aerodynamics, had seen only a few dozen miles of track testing and its Ilmor 3.5 L V10 engine was underpowered by 1994 standards. That season the team did not finish a single race and from the French Grand Prix onwards, neither car qualified. They scored a total of zero points that season.

By 1995, having merged with the dying Team Lotus, things looked up. The obsolete Ilmor engines had been replaced by Ford ED V8s and a whole host of new sponsors were brought in. Good news also came when the PR02 was guaranteed a start each race, with Larrousse and Lotus disappearing from the entry lists and only Forti coming in. Belmondo had been replaced with Andrea Montermini. Having had no luck in the first half of the season, team partner Gachot vacated his seat in mid-1995, making way for two pay-drivers, Giovanni Lavaggi and, later, Jean-Denis Deletraz. Gachot later returned after the money of the two pay-drivers dried up, with Pacfic's best finishes that season being 8th in the German and Australian Grands Prix.

Withdrawal and aftermath

At the end of the 1995 season, the team withdrew from Formula One and Wiggins went back to Formula 3000, resurrecting Pacific Racing, but without the same success of previous seasons, the team quit at the end of the 1996 season. In 1997, Wiggins also attempted to enter sportscar racing and the 24 Hours of Le Mans with a heavily modified BRM chassis known as the P301 and using Nissan engines. Following a series of failures for the project into 1998, Wiggins closed the team.

Wiggins joined Lola and helped the constructor reclaim ground in the Champ Car World Series. With a foothold in the United States, the mechanic-turned-team manager joined up with the Herdez brewery and in 2000 acquired Bettenhausen Motorsports, renaming it HVM Racing, which he still runs today. In 2006, Paul Stoddart, former owner of the Minardi Formula 1 team, bought an interest in the team and re-christened it Minardi Team USA.

Complete Formula One results

(key)

Year	Chassis	Engine	Tyres	Drivers	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	Points	WCC
1994	Pacific PR01	Ilmor 2175A V10	G		BRA	PAC	SMR	MON	ESP	CAN	FRA	GBR	GER	HUN	BEL	ITA	POR	EUR	JPN	AUS		0	NC
				Paul Belmondo	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	Ret	Ret	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ
				Bertrand Gachot	Ret	DNQ	Ret	Ret	Ret	Ret	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ	DNQ
1995	Pacific PR02	Ford ED V8	G		BRA	ARG	SMR	ESP	MON	CAN	FRA	GBR	GER	HUN	BEL	ITA	POR	EUR	PAC	JPN	AUS	0	NC
				Bertrand Gachot	Ret	Ret	Ret	Ret	Ret	Ret	Ret	12							Ret	Ret	8
				Giovanni Lavaggi									Ret	Ret	Ret	Ret
				Jean-Denis Deletraz													Ret	NC
				Andrea Montermini	9	Ret	Ret	DNS	DSQ	Ret	NC	Ret	8	12	Ret	Ret	Ret	Ret	Ret	Ret	Ret

External links

• Team Profile on F1 Rejects