Toyota Supra

Tyler McQuarrie
Honda Tuning: How did you get into the RS*R car? Did they approach you?

Tyler McQuarrie: I was talking to them a little bit last year around mid-season. They kind of knew that I was looking to get into a new car. Around halfway through the season, I had made the decision that I wanted to look into other opportunities beyond the Jasper Supra, and I started talking to Ben from RS*R USA from there. Yokohama was the tire sponsor for the Supra, and I've been with them for other racing events for quite awhile. They really helped to facilitate the talks since RS*R was also sponsored by Yokohama. At the time, RS*R was just looking to run a second car, and continued to have Alex as their primary driver in the S2000. I think they were hoping to run two S2000s, but when Alex moved on to judging, my spot in the drivers seat was pretty much a done deal.

HT: It seems that Alex pretty much had the car built the way he wanted it. How much did you adapt to the car, and how much did you adjust the setup to be more to your liking?
TM: Most of it was just adapting to how the car was. Alex proved that the car setup worked well the way it was. We changed a couple of small things here and there to make it a little more comfortable for me to drive with my driving style. There are still a few things we want to change on the new car that we are building for next year, but I think it's pretty good. I tend to adapt to a car more than I want to retune and re-engineer it, doing more fine-tuning instead of re-engineering it all. The one thing I really want to get is a hydraulic e-brake in the new car. I think it's a necessity with all of the tracks that we go to. The mechanical e-brake is just not consistent.

HT: The Supra you drove for Jasper was a very long wheelbase, high-horsepower car, whereas the S2000 is much shorter and much less power. How different is the driving style needed for the different cars?
TM: When I first got into the car, I was expecting it to be pretty hard to adapt to, but it seemed to be an easy transition. With a lack of time in the car, it was hard for me to be consistent. The powerband is actually a lot more linear than I was expecting. With the Supra, I had a much shorter powerband with the weight and the turbo that Jasper used. I think the powerband is more driveable and useable in the S2000 compared to the Supra.

Power-to-weight is way better, so even though the Supra has more horsepower, the S2000 is faster. The Supra was easier to be consistent in though, because it was longer and heavier, but that also meant that it wasn't as competitive. I just feel like I can get into a lot of different cars and with a little time, I can be competitive. I don't think you'll ever get all one sided where someone wins because it's all car setup or all driver skill. It's just too competitive. The one thing I've struggled with is consistency with the initiation. Once I'm comfortable with the course and the initiation, the S2000 is cake for me.

HT: Your day job is to just drive and instruct people on how to drive all day every day. Is that truly the dream job that it sounds like?
TM: You know, for what I've accomplished and the people I've raced against, sometimes I hope that I would be further along in my racing career that I am. But I enjoy introducing people to motorsports and driving every day. Almost every program we have at the school, there are always a couple of people who say they would kill to have my job, and that's a good reminder that I have a fun job. But I've been at the school for 9 years; it's easy to get tired of doing the same thing for 9 years.