The story of Pacific Racing begins in 1984 in Thetford, in the Breckland district of Norfolk, in the far east of the United Kingdom, when Londoner Keith Wiggins founded his own team, serving as president, CEO, and technical director, as well as being the owner. Wiggins was a former mechanic and a moderately successful driver, as well as a design engineer who had grown under the mentorship of Ron Dennis, having joined Project Four Racing in 1977. With limited resources but a great deal of passion, Wiggins started in Formula Ford 1600 with Norwegian driver Harald Huysman and immediately achieved unexpected success by winning both the European and Benelux championships in the category. Wiggins’ team rose quickly and impressively, and the collaboration with Reynard, who supplied the cars, proved to be highly effective. Success followed, and in the ensuing years Pacific Racing managed to win every championship it entered (European Formula Ford 1600, World Formula Ford 2000, British Formula 3, and Formula 3000), featuring talented drivers such as Bertrand Gachot, J.J. Lehto, Eddie Irvine, David Coulthard, Allan McNish, and Christian Fittipaldi, who secured the team’s most prestigious title: the Formula 3000 Championship.
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| PACIFIC PR01, Bertrand Gachot Interlagos, Brazilian GP 1994 |
When, in 1992, Wiggins saw the opportunity to make the leap into Formula 1, he already had a solid and successful background, making his decision anything but reckless. The team was renamed Pacific Grand Prix Ltd, and lacking a technical staff, Wiggins once again turned to Reynard Racing to design and build the chassis for the future Pacific PR01, hoping to benefit from the years of research and development carried out by the British constructor. Unfortunately for Wiggins, by the end of 1991 Reynard’s design team, including Rory Byrne, had moved entirely to Benetton, taking with them the plans for the new single-seater, while the aerodynamic research data was shared with Ligier and Pacific Racing itself.
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| PACIFIC PR01, Paul Belmondo Hungaroring, Hungarian GP 1994 |
The PR01 design was thus refined by Paul Brown, previously seen in Formula 1 in 1984 with the Zakspeed 841, and Frank Coppuck, nephew of Gordon Coppuck, who had designed McLarens in the 1970s and had F1 experience with FORCE Lola, Tyrrell, and Lotus, as well as having worked in John Barnard’s atelier. Unfortunately for Wiggins, the reality of Formula 1 proved much tougher than expected, especially since the PR01 was already outdated, based on an earlier Reynard project that had been started, abandoned, and then revived after a few seasons. Aesthetically, the PR01, particularly its front and side sections, closely resembled the latest Benetton cars, with which it shared some project foundations. Unlike Schumacher's winning Benettons, however, the PR01 was completely inadequate and underperforming. The core issue was that the original car had been designed for active suspension systems, which were banned under the new technical regulations. Thus, Brown and Coppuck, assisted by a small team working at Reynard, had to start a new design based on the limited remaining data from the old Reynard F1 project, incorporating several minor components from Reynard’s Formula 3000 chassis in an effort to keep costs down.
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| PACIFIC PR01, Paul Belmondo Hungaroring, Hungarian GP 1994 |
Moreover, the Ilmor 2175A V10 engines used in the cars, acquired from the now-defunct March team, were already two years old and underpowered, coupled with an outdated manual gearbox designed by Pacific, and the funds for development, led by Italian driver Giovanni Lavaggi, were severely lacking. With such discouraging premises, it’s no surprise that Pacific Grand Prix Ltd’s debut season turned out to be a disaster. The two single-seaters were entrusted to French drivers Bertrand Gachot and Paul Belmondo (son of the famous actor Jean-Paul), the latter expected, at least in theory, to attract sponsors.
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| PACIFIC PR01, Bertrand Gachot Adelaide, Australian GP 1994 |
Instead, the car appeared on track in an anonymous gray livery, “scratched” with lilac and light blue stripes, bearing only the Pacific name on the engine cover. In the first six races of the season, Gachot qualified five times and Belmondo only twice, but all seven starts ended in early retirements. The rest of the championship continued with an endless series of failed qualifications, and despite a small mid-season update made possible by the limited funds from the sponsor Ursus, whose branding appeared on the Wiggins cars after a few races, the situation did not improve. The team ended the 1994 championship at the bottom of the Constructors’ standings, never once seeing the checkered flag.
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