Horizon Motorsport

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Horizon Motorsport (Previously known as O'Lauchlan Motorsports) was a F1RWRS team run by the Melrose Racing Team consortium owned by Former Formula One World Champion Daniel Melrose. The team is most famous for their success at the first ever F1RWRS Indianapolis 500 and other oval races both in the category and elsewhere.

History

The team was formed by Australian Dean O'Lauchlan, initially to participate in the Porsche Carerra Cup series in his homeland with moderate success, until the series collapsed in 2008. From there, O'Lauchlan took his team to the Australasia dirt track racing scene where he very quickly found his feet. Eventually, after several years in both Australia and America, O'Lauchlan decided to used his considerable amassed wealth and racing experience to buy his way into his dream; to race in a top-line single seater series. With that, he bought an ex-MRT 2011 F1RWRS car and used it to enter into the 2012 F1RWRS season

F1RWRS

O'Lauchlan used the championship contending material from last year to good effect to qualify for the first three races of the year, but race results for the first half of the year were few and far between with a best finish of 14th at the British Grand Prix. At his home race in Bathurst however, the local heor qualified for the race and survived the attrition to finish an incredible 5th place, in what was effectively a two year old car. The team expanded to two cars for the Budweiser 500, after O'Lauchlan's American connections got the team enough money to enter a second car for HRT refugee Frank Zimmer. With O'Lauchlan's vast dirt-oval experience and the P85s proving to be much more effective than the P86s in the back of the works MRTs, the team had by far their most competitive outing of the year. O'Lauchlan led midway through the race before finishing 6th with a new Indianapolis race lap record, while Zimmer in the second car finished right behind him in 7th in what was a fantastic showing for the team.

For the 2013 season, O'Lauchlan Motorsport expanded to a full-time two car effort after becoming a satellite operation to MRT. Having been newly christened as Horizon Motorsport in the off season, both teams had high-hopes of competitive showings under the new regulations. However, the BMW engine which was put together for the 2013 season proved to be both underpowered and unreliable, which relegated the two Horizon cars to a disastrous year stranded in pre-qualifying. This led to growing tensions between Zimmer and the team, and his eventual sacking just a week before the British Grand Prix. In his place, Spanish-American driver Vidal Reyna-Sanchez was drafted in, to little effect. At the end of the year, the decision was made that MRT would absorb the F1RWRS assets of Horizon Motorsports, while the Horizon team would become the American operating arm of MRT.