It’s that time of the week again: time for us to look at the past teams that made an exit from the sport of Formula One, having scored no points. This week, we remember Pacific Racing.
In 1984, a former mechanic by the name of Keith Wiggins founded a racing team called Pacific Racing. With financial backing from the cigarette brand Marlboro, Wiggins hired Harald Huysman to race in the Formula Ford series. The team won the championships in the Benelux and European series. The 1986 and 1987 seasons had similar results with different drivers.
The team advanced into British Formula Three in 1988, with JJ Lehto winning the championship, and then into the International Formula 3000 series in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. By 1990, the team had lost their Marlboro backing, but that didn’t stop Christian Fittipaldi from winning the International Formula 3000 championship the following year.
With much success in the lower formulae, Wiggins was interested in moving to the highest level of open wheel motorsport: Formula One. Renaming the team Pacific Grand Prix, Wiggins sought after Reynard Racing to get a design for a car in time for the 1993 season. The company was a competitor in Formula 3000, but had designed a car for their own Formula One campaign which was later scrapped. However, the design had been sold to Ligier and the engineering staff had moved to Benetton, leaving Pacific’s in-house design team to start from square one.
Failing to secure enough money, the team postponed their Formula One debut until the following 1994 season. The car was built with some spare components from the Reynard Formula 3000 car, the car had no wind tunnel experience, limited track running and the Ilmor engine was not as powerful as the other engine at the time.
The team hired Paul Belmondo and Bertrand Gachot as the drivers, although the duo wouldn’t be taking part in many races. The debut in Brazil saw only Gachot on the grid, with his teammate failing to qualify for the event. The race was short lived for the team, as Gachot was involved in a collision in the opening laps and had to retire.
The car only qualified for four of the other races at the start of the season: San Marino, Monaco, Spain and Canada. At the races where they did make it to the grid, the cars never completed the race distance thanks to mechanical issues or accidents. From the French Grand Prix onward, the team failed to qualify for the race, although they were not too far off of the pace set by the car in front.
The 1995 season was an optimistic season for the team, as they merged with Team Lotus, becoming Pacific Team Lotus. The merger brought in great team personnel, lots of sponsors and a more powerful Ford engine. The team retained Gachot and hired Andrea Montermini for the season.
The team was guaranteed a starting position on the grid, but a string of bad luck left Gachot sidelined part way through many of the races. Despite a P12 finish in Britain, Gachot gave up his seat on the team, paving the way for Giovanni Lavaggi and Jean-Denis Délétraz (pay drivers) to spend time in the car.
Lavaggi raced four races in the season, failing to finish any of those races. Meanwhile, Montermini had scored the team’s highest finish in Germany with a P8 finish. Délétraz replaced Lavaggi, but it wasn’t long before his money disappeared. Gachot returned for the final three races in the season, ending the season on a high note by matching his teammate’s previous P8 finish from earlier in the season.
With no points to show for his Formula One venture, Wiggins shut down his Formula One operations at the end of the 1995 season, deciding to return to Formula 3000. The team quit mid-season two years later, making only a few sports car appearances in the years following.
Points are a difficult thing to obtain in Formula One. In this weekly series, we will look back the past teams who gave it their all, but fell short.
Points are a difficult thing to obtain in Formula One. In this weekly series, we will look back the past teams who gave it their all, but fell short.
