Born on 20 February 1956, Pollock worked as a teacher and then as director of sport from 1981 to 1985 at the College Beausoleil in Villars, Switzerland. It was there that he taught a young Jacques Villeneuve, who had been sent to the school following the death of his Formula One driver father Gilles Villeneuve. The professional relationship between the two men began years later when they met by chance at the Suzuka circuit — Villeneuve was attending on the invitation of a Japanese photographer, Pollock on Honda-related business. After three subsequent meetings in Switzerland, Pollock agreed to manage Villeneuve's racing career.
Pollock's first initiative was to negotiate Villeneuve a drive with Toyota Team TOM'S in Japan in 1992. From there he brokered Villeneuve's move to American Formula Atlantic in 1993 and then to IndyCars in 1994, where Villeneuve won at Road America in his rookie season. In 1995 Villeneuve won both the IndyCar championship and the Indianapolis 500. Pollock used that success to secure Villeneuve a seat at Williams, where the Canadian won the Formula One World Championship in 1997.
During Villeneuve's final IndyCar season, Pollock had already begun planning a Formula One team. Adrian Reynard told him that if he could assemble the funding, an engine partner, and a driver, Reynard would support the chassis programme. The key commercial break came when Imperial Tobacco Canada was acquired by British American Tobacco. Pollock leveraged existing contacts from the IndyCar era — originally from Imperial Tobacco, now within BAT — to secure investment for the Formula One project.
In 1998 Pollock and his partners purchased the Tyrrell Racing team and ran it for the remainder of the 1998 season while simultaneously building British American Racing as a new organisation from a greenfield site. The team's launch generated immediate controversy when Adrian Reynard's presentation included predictions that BAR would achieve pole position in their first race and win the championship in their second season. Neither came to pass: BAR scored no championship points in their first year of competition in 1999 due to persistent unreliability.
Despite the failed first season, Pollock's most significant achievement as team principal was negotiating Honda's return to Formula One as BAR's engine supplier. The BAR-Honda partnership launched in 2000 and the team finished fifth in the Constructors' Championship in 2000, broadly described as equal on points with Benetton in fourth. The team was developing into a credible midfield operation, but Pollock departed before it reached its competitive peak. BAR would go on to finish second in the Constructors' Championship in 2004 under later management.
Pollock managed Villeneuve's Formula One career through to its conclusion. Their formal business relationship ended in January 2008 though the two remained personally close.
Following his departure from BAR, Pollock was contacted by businessman Kevin Kalkhoven to conduct due diligence on the bankrupt Arrows Grand Prix International, but declined to proceed. Instead he joined Kalkhoven in acquiring the assets of the PacWest Racing CART team, entering the 2003 CART championship for a single season before selling his stake. His introduction of Kalkhoven to Gerald Forsythe led to the two men purchasing the entire CART series and Cosworth.
In May 2011 Pollock announced the formation of PURE SA (Propulsion Universelle et Recuperation d'Energie), an independent engineering company designed to supply power units to Formula One teams. He became the sole investor in the project. Technical director Gilles Simon departed in July 2012 citing financial difficulties, and Pollock closed PURE in 2014 having terminated the full power unit design programme. The company was liquidated, with Pollock retaining the intellectual property.
Pollock's career reflects the changing shape of Formula One in the late 1990s, when the sport opened to new investors and commercial operators willing to build teams from scratch. His success in guiding Villeneuve from Swiss boarding school to the Formula One world title is among the more unlikely ascents in the sport's history, and the creation of BAR — however turbulent — demonstrated the scale of ambition he brought to team ownership. The failure of PURE illustrated how difficult independent engine supply had become in the sport's mature commercial era.