Panis competed in Formula One for Ligier, Prost, BAR and Toyota, winning the Monaco Grand Prix in 1996 with the former, amongst five podiums.

Panis moved into sportscar racing after Formula One, and is a race-winner in the FFSA GT Championship and the Le Mans Series.

He earned a surprise second place that season at Hockenheim ahead of teammate Éric Bernard, and finished 11th in the standings for the marque.

He earned another surprise second place at the 1995 Australian Grand Prix, in spite of being two laps behind the leader Damon Hill, and he also added a handful of fourths to his resume, giving him an 8th-place finish in the championship.

Starting 14th on a wet track, Panis passed other rivals on the narrow circuit, including Martin Brundle, Mika Häkkinen and Johnny Herbert, and timed his change onto slick tyres perfectly.

He overtook Eddie Irvine at the Lowes Hairpin and was running in third place before the Williams-Renault of Damon Hill and Benetton-Renault of Jean Alesi both hit terminal technical difficulties.

He achieved sixth place at Luxembourg and appeared to show that he had fully recovered from his accident, as he drove as well as he had done before the crash.

The highlight of the season was a ninth-place finish in Australia, although he also ran strongly at the 1998 Canadian Grand Prix until car failure intervened.

He began to qualify much more strongly, with a third place in France, fifth at the Nurburgring, and sixth at Suzuka, where he spent the first stages of the race in third.

Panis was a consideration to drive for Williams, a team that was in a state of flux at the time, but turned it down to test for McLaren.

He was signed to drive and provide the second-year team his knowledge, as well as help his new Brazilian teammate, Cristiano da Matta, learn the ropes of F1.

In early October 2004 he announced his intention to retire from racing following the 2004 Japanese Grand Prix; he planned to continue at Toyota as a test driver in 2005 and 2006.

He was also considered by the likes of Häkkinen, who was particularly upset when Panis left the McLaren testing team to return to full-time driving, to be one of the best test-drivers in the field.

TDS Racing took over from Tech 1 as operational partner in 2024, a year that also saw the team strike a sponsorship deal with Marc VDS.