CR Motorsport

CR Motorsport was a Spanish team best known for winning the inaugural Formula 1 Rejects World Race Series race, the 2010 German Grand Prix. The rest of the team's existence was characterised by mediocrity, frequently propping up the rear of the grid. Darren Older Jr drove for the team in every race it entered over a period of four years. The team was sold at the end of the 2013 season and became Tropico Grand Prix.

History in the F1RWRS
The team was founded by former Major League Baseball player Larry Walker and a group of local businessmen in Spain as a tribute to his former team Colorado Rockies. Known for his interest in motorsport, John and Frank Zimmer invited Walker to enter a team into their newly created racing series, the F1RWRS. Walker gladly accepted and CR Motorsport was entered as one of the ten founding teams for the inaugural 2010 season. The team signed up British pair Ashley Watkinson and pay driver Darren Older Jr, the first of his kind in the series. CR weren't expected to be troubling the top of the timesheets too often, with a fairly conservative in-house chassis and a customer supply of Ford engines. They took everyone by surprise at the first race of the year however, when Watkinson took a sensational victory having started 9th on the grid.

Over the remainder of the season, Watkinson was able to consistently finish in the points, though after his and the team's maiden win, he never troubled positions higher than 5th, and ended up in 9th place in the drivers' championship by the season's end. In comparison, Older Jr struggled, only scoring twice, with two 8th places at Luxembourg and Belgium. Consequently, CR weren't able to mount a strong challenge in the constructors' championship, and finished 7th overall, with a total of 33 points. The reality was however that this would turn out to be CR's highest finish to a season in its lifetime.

Watkinson wasn't happy with the team's performance though, and left the team at the end of 2010, looking for a more competitive drive, subsequently signing to drive for the Pacchia team. Older Jr remained as CR's sole driver for the 2011 season, and despite a new chassis, with the team keeping the same Ford EDA engines from 2010, they struggled. A fifth place at Zandvoort was their best result all year, with Older Jr only able to score on a further two occasions, as well as failing to pre-qualify six times. As a result, CR slid down the standings, ending up in 18th place overall with a paltry 8 points to show for their 2011 efforts. As far as Larry Walker was concerned, it simply wasn't good enough.

Retiring from the team on the back of their dismal 2011 campaign, Walker sold CR and Eliseo Ortega, a Basque investor, took overall control. Damon Cannon joined the team to partner Older Jr, and a new chassis, the CR F212, alongside new Ford EDB engines suggested that CR were on the up for 2012. This belief gained momentum when Older Jr won his first race and set the fastest lap on the way at the season-opening Bavarian Grand Prix. The bubble was soon burst though for as far as points were concerned, Cannon scored the team's second and last points finish with 8th place at the Nurburgring. With 18 DNPQs from a total of 32 entries, the early points were enough to keep CR in the midfield for the constructors' championship, finishing joint 11th, but didn't hide the fact that it was an otherwise awful 2012 season.

Things got progressively worse during the 2013 season. The ever-faithful Older Jr remained as his sponsors continued to come up with the goods, whilst another pay driver, Andrea Massini was initially signed on a race-by-race basis. By the fifth race of the year, the Monaco GP, Massini's money had run out, and another Italian pay driver, Fredo Mestolio, whose manager was Chris Dagnall, was brought in for the rest of the year. Despite the boost in finances, the CR F213 chassis and new Life engines were woefully inadequate and the team failed to qualify for a single race all year. Once pushed into pre-qualifying for the second half of the year, CR racked up a full house of DNPQs. Even a major sponsorship deal with MasterCard secured prior to the British Grand Prix failed to bring about any improvement at all. A surprising turn of fate though introduced the leader of the island republic Tropico, El Presidente, to the effort, culminating in a takeover of the team by a German council under direct command of El Presidente at the end of 2013. The team was renamed Tropico Grand Prix, and began competition in 2014.