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.

The following year, Gachot, also part of the Marlboro World Championship team, won the Formula Ford 2000 crown for Pacific.

With their roots in the same project, the resulting Benetton B193, Ligier JS37 and Pacific PR01 shared the same slab-sided, raised-nose profile that later became standard in Formula One.

That season the team failed to score a point or finish a single race, and from the French Grand Prix onwards, neither car qualified.

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.

Pacific's best finishes that season were 8th in the German and Australian Grands Prix, both times as the multi-lapped last car in the track.

[3] On that same year, 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.

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.