From winners
to outsiders.

Pacific Grand Prix was born in September 1992 when Keith Wiggins announced plans to take his championship-winning team into Formula One within two years.

The winning years

Pacific was founded in 1984. Harald Huysman immediately delivered the Benelux and European Formula Ford titles. Bertrand Gachot followed with British Formula Ford and Formula Ford 2000 success, while JJ Lehto carried the team to further European, British and World Cup victories before winning the 1988 British Formula 3 Championship.

Formula 3000

Pacific entered international Formula 3000 in 1989 with JJ Lehto and Eddie Irvine. By 1991 the team had become the category’s pace-setter, taking the title with Christian Fittipaldi. Jordi Gené won the opening round of 1992; David Coulthard won a race and finished third in the 1993 championship while the Formula One project gathered momentum.

The PR01

The first Pacific Formula One car was unveiled in October 1993. Powered by an Ilmor V10 and driven by Bertrand Gachot and Paul Belmondo, the PR01 entered the 1994 World Championship. With limited resources, the debut season became an intense lesson in the scale and difficulty of Formula One.

Pacific Team Lotus

Investment from Ko Gotoh arrived in January 1995. The following month Pacific announced a strategic alliance with Team Lotus and entered the season as Pacific Team Lotus. The all-new PR02, designed around the Ford Cosworth ED V8, finished ninth on its debut in Brazil with Andrea Montermini.

The final chapter

The 1995 campaign was fought with Montermini, Gachot, Giovanni Lavaggi and Jean-Denis Deletraz. The surviving official website records the season through press releases, results, personnel biographies and technical pages—material now preserved in this archive.