 | |
| Full name | Pacific Team Lotus (1995) Pacific Grand Prix (1994) |
|---|---|
| Base | Thetford,United Kingdom |
| Founder(s) | Keith Wiggins |
| Noted staff | Adrian Reynard Frank Coppuck |
| Noted drivers |  Paul BelmondoBertrand Gachot Giovanni Lavaggi Jean-Denis DélétrazAndrea Montermini |
| Formula One World Championship career | |
| First entry | 1994 Brazilian Grand Prix |
| Races entered | 33 (40 starts from 66 entries) |
| Constructors' Championships | 0 |
| Drivers' Championships | 0 |
| Race victories | 0(best finish: 8th,1995 German andAustralian Grands Prix) |
| Pole positions | 0(best grid position: 19th,1995 Japanese Grand Prix) |
| Fastest laps | 0 |
| Final entry | 1995 Australian Grand Prix |
Pacific Racing (later known asPacific Grand Prix, and finally asPacific Team Lotus) was amotor racing team from theUnited Kingdom. Following success in lower formulae, the team took part in two full seasons ofFormula One, in1994 and1995, entering 33 Grands Prix without any success.
The team was founded by former mechanicKeith Wiggins in 1984, to race in the EuropeanFormula Ford Championship, with Norwegian driverHarald Huysman andMarlboro backing. Huysman won both the European and Benelux titles. On Huysman's advice, Pacific enteredBertrand Gachot in British Formula Ford with aReynard 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 withJJ Lehto.
In 1988, Pacific entered theBritish 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 toFormula 3000, once more in association with Reynard and Marlboro. However, Lehto andEddie Irvine's season was disappointing and the tobacco company's support moved to rivalDAMS in 1990. The team returned to form in 1991, takingChristian Fittipaldi to the F3000 crown.
Pacific Racing had won in every junior category it had participated in, and by 1992 Wiggins was determined that it would make the step up to F1 for the 1993 season, in the process renaming the team asPacific 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 Byrne-led design team had gone toBenetton at the end of 1991 and Reynard had sold the design (still in form of paper drawings) toLigier. 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 BenettonB193, Ligier JS37 and Pacific PR01 shared the same slab-sided, raised-nose profile that later became standard in Formula One.
They instead postponed their entry in January 1993[1] because of a recession and resulting failure of investors to pay up.[citation needed]
They were unable to enter F1 until 1994. The year was a disaster.Paul Belmondo and former Jordan driverBertrand Gachot (who was a shareholder in the team) started the season as drivers, withOliver 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 itsIlmor 3.5 LV10 engine was underpowered by 1994 standards. That season the team failed to score a point or finish a single race, and from theFrench Grand Prix onwards, neither car qualified.
Aiming for a fresh start in 1995, Pacific made a deal with the owner of the formerTeam Lotus to enter as "Pacific Team Lotus". Although no staff, equipment or technology came to the team as a result, the aim was for Pacific to benefit from association with the famous Lotus name.[2] The obsolete Ilmor engines had been replaced byFord 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, withLarrousse and Lotus disappearing from the entry lists and onlyForti coming in. An embarrassing moment happened during the reveal of the car when it took Wiggins 25 minutes to open a bottle of champagne. Belmondo had been replaced withAndrea Montermini. Having had no luck in the first half of the season, team partner Gachot vacated his seat in mid-1995, making way for paydriversGiovanni Lavaggi (four races, four DNFs) andJean-Denis Délétraz (two races, one DNF, one NC). Gachot later returned after the money of the two pay-drivers dried up and two drivers Wiggins wanted to run (Formula Nippon driverKatsumi Yamamoto for Okayama and Suzuka and test driverOliver Gavin for Australia) were denied superlicences. Pacific's best finishes that season were 8th in theGerman andAustralian Grands Prix, both times as the multi-lapped last car in the track.
At the end of the 1995 season, the team withdrew from Formula One and Wiggins went back to Formula 3000, resurrecting Pacific Racing withPatrick Lemarié andCristiano da Matta as drivers, but was unable to recapture the success of the pre-F1 era. Both were replaced byOliver Tichy andMarc Gené for the following season; Gené left the team after his accident at Pau, and Tichy continued alone until the team quit mid-season. In 1997, Pacific's former F1 drivers Gachot and Belmondo were reunited in theAll Japan Grand Touring Car Championship, both acting as drivers of the Pacific-sponsoredToyota Supra entered byCerumo in the GT500 class.[3] On that same year, Wiggins also attempted to enter sportscar racing and the24 Hours of Le Mans with a heavily modifiedBRM chassis known as theP301 and usingNissan engines. Following a series of failures for the project into 1998, Wiggins closed the team.
Wiggins joinedLola and helped the constructor reclaim ground in theChamp Car World Series. With a foothold in the United States, the mechanic-turned-team manager joined up with theHerdez brewery and in 2000 acquiredBettenhausen Motorsports, renaming itHVM Racing. In 2006,Paul Stoddart, former owner of theMinardi F1 team, bought an interest in the team and renamed it Minardi Team USA; the team reverted to the HVM Racing name after American open-wheel reunification two years later, before leaving the sport at the end of 2012 season.
* Including points scored for other teams.
(key)
| Year | Chassis | Engine | Tyres | Drivers | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | Points | TC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1989 | Reynard 89D | MugenV8 | A | SIL | VAL | PAU | JER | PER | BRH | BIR | SPA | BUG | DIJ | 17 | 7th | ||
 Eddie Irvine | DNS | Ret | DSQ | Ret | 3 | Ret | 6 | 9 | 4 | 4 | |||||||
 JJ Lehto | DSQ | Ret | 4 | 6 | Ret | Ret | Ret | 5 | Ret | ||||||||
| Allan McNish | 8 | ||||||||||||||||
| 1990 | Lola T90/50 | MugenV8 | A | DON | SIL | PAU | JER | MNZ | PER | HOC | BRH | BIR | BUG | NOG | 0 | NC | |
 Stéphane Proulx | 12 | Ret | Ret | Ret | Ret | Ret | 10 | Ret | Ret | Ret | 7 | ||||||
 Marco Greco | DNQ | DNQ | |||||||||||||||
| Claude Bourbonnais | DNQ | DNQ | |||||||||||||||
| 1991 | Reynard 91D | MugenV8 | A | VAL | PAU | JER | MUG | PER | HOC | BRH | SPA | BUG | NOG | 69 | 1st | ||
| Antonio Tamburini | 3 | 10 | 4 | 7 | 4 | 6 | 5 | Ret | 1 | Ret | |||||||
| Christian Fittipaldi | 2 | 2 | 1 | 3 | DSQ | 4 | 3 | Ret | 2 | 1 | |||||||
| 1992 | Reynard 92D | MugenV8 | A | SIL | PAU | CAT | PER | HOC | NUR | SPA | ALB | NOG | MAG | 24 | 4th | ||
 Laurent Aïello | Ret | Ret | Ret | 11 | 10 | 5 | 6 | Ret | 7 | Ret | |||||||
 Jordi Gené | 1 | Ret | 3 | Ret | 5 | 8 | 2 | Ret | 8 | 10 | |||||||
| 1993 | Reynard 93D | CosworthV8 | A | DON | SIL | PAU | PER | HOC | NUR | SPA | MAG | NOG | 29 | 4th | |||
| David Coulthard | 13 | 2 | 2 | 1 | Ret | 7 | 3 | Ret | Ret | ||||||||
 Michael Bartels | Ret | 3 | Ret | Ret | Ret | Ret | Ret | ||||||||||
| Phil Andrews | DSQ | 13 | |||||||||||||||
| 1996 | Lola T96/50 | ZytekV8 | A | NUR | PAU | PER | HOC | SIL | SPA | MAG | EST | MUG | HOC | 9 | 7th | ||
| Patrick Lemarié | 12 | 5 | 13 | 10 | 8 | Ret | 8 | 15 | Ret | 8 | |||||||
| Cristiano da Matta | 9 | 4 | 5 | Ret | Ret | 10 | 5 | 7 | 20 | Ret | |||||||
| 1997 | Lola T96/50 | ZytekV8 | A | SIL | PAU | HEL | NUR | PER | HOC | A1R | SPA | MUG | JER | 8 | 9th | ||
 Oliver Tichy | 8 | 8 | 2 | 9 | Ret | 7 | 5 | Ret | |||||||||
| Marc Gené | 13 | DNQ | |||||||||||||||
| Sources:[9][10][11] | |||||||||||||||||
(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 | PR01 | Ilmor 2175A 3.5V10 | 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 | PR02 | Ford EDC 3.0V8 | 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 Délétraz | Ret | 15 | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Andrea Montermini | 9 | Ret | Ret | DNS | DSQ | Ret | NC | Ret | 8 | 12 | Ret | DNS | Ret | Ret | Ret | Ret | Ret | ||||||
| Sources:[9][12] | |||||||||||||||||||||||
