Larry Chen: Racing As A Privateer: Studio RSR Brings Their A90 Up Pikes Peak Video

Larry Chen Video Transcript

Thank you [Applause] technical difficulties how relieved are you right now I am very relieved because I was more nervous for Tech inspection than to drive yeah because uh if they fail you for something yeah then who knows what you might have to modify on the vehicle to

Get it to pass exactly if we can do it right the guys have to do more work they’ve already spent the last probably three four days staying up to like past midnight making sure everything’s good and then two weeks before that all the time in prep that went into the car so

If like one little thing didn’t pass it was going to be like oh God can we fix it can we do it so we’ll see so let’s talk about this idea right this is first A90 to compete at Pikes Peak I wasn’t sure I think it I think it is okay I

Mean I don’t remember seeing another one yeah and honestly it’s about time yeah I would have thought it would be earlier because this is such a good platform right 100 especially in terms of like time attack yeah and in terms of a budget build this is honestly really

Really good to go fast yeah on a budget exactly the price of the car starting point the potential in it and then the amount that you could get out of it would like a small amount of money right relatively compared to trying to do the same amount

Of power on a different car yeah and then the cooling on these stock is so good so that’s one thing I’m worried about for the run because the Air’s thinner right so hopefully the cooling is going to be good yeah let’s talk about all that let’s talk about all the

Modifications that you’ve done but what was the idea of this so you run Studio rsr yeah right which is a shop based in Los Angeles you guys specialize in BMWs yeah and what else do you guys do pretty much anything track related so we make a bunch of roll cages for probably over

100 different models now so we get a lot of Camaros domestics Japanese cars so anything track related we love to do obviously we work on you know Street stuff too turbos and all that good stuff yeah I really appreciate you guys helping me with my Toyota SEMA car yeah

Because I’m actually running the cage that you guys built in that car so because I’m using it as more of a track vehicle the safety aspect is just so important yeah it’s cool that you guys are offering so many different types of cages for so many different Vehicles

Yeah and they’re all built in Southern California yeah everything’s built in-house and everyone’s been really cool you know it’s not like we went out to plan hey we’re going to do this chassis this chassis this chassis people just see that we do it and call us and we’re

Super grateful for that and then we just say hey if we can get two more people to do it we’ll do that car like we have some very random cars that you’d never think people would put a cage in so this is your personal shop car correct and

This is what version is this technically we’re calling this V4 so V1 was kind of like a you know some quick bolt-ons tires and and is this a first year 2020 2020. okay yeah what made you want to come to Pikes Peak uh uh I don’t know it’s like always been

With me right ever since I got into cars it was watching F1 and watching Pike’s Peak and watching rally stuff so ever since I was a kid I remember watching Pikes Peak every year whenever it was on TV and then yeah having the ability to finally do it

I was like you know what let’s try it and that’s kind of the cool thing about this race that’s what I really like about Pikes Peak the fact that a individual a privateer like yourself who’s just a fan who’s been a fan yeah who has the means and has the vehicle to

Build something to compete against these Giants yeah I mean we have Ford factory team yeah you know we’ve had Volkswagen factory team Porsche Factory team like all of these Factory efforts yeah you know all these years and the fact that you can have something that was built in

Your own shop yeah that you drive yourself that you guys wrench on yourself I can’t think of any other International race you know race event that you can do that with racing against Factory Works teams and then other shops and then even guys who just do their

Stuff in the garage you know so it really pushed us to like hey let’s do our best work and and see what we can do because we’re going up against the factory guys yeah all right so this is really probably one of the craziest time attack Supras that I’ve seen like what

The heck is going on here so this is insane we call this the Shark Fin and when we built the car technically V3 for uh Global time attack Dakota you know that’s when all the arrow changed and we did a bunch of suspension stuff I wanted

To incorporate the tail fin but for some odd reason whenever we have an event like it’s kind of like our thing now we just wait till last minute but it’s because we have so many customers cars to work on you know all that good stuff so but yeah this tail fin I’ve been

Dreaming about for years so what’s the science behind it you know if you ask the F1 guys it’s for lateral stability left to right but there’s some people I’ve noticed too whenever cars have something on the roof that’s affecting the boundary layer of the arrow going over the roof down over

The rear if something’s on the roof it’s kind of creating a turbulence so I think what’s happening is this is supposed to be reorganizing the air so that you get a clean stream under the wing got it because what a lot of people don’t understand is the downforce created from

The wing is not the the air pushing up top it’s the air getting under yeah and that’s why this APR dual element you know this lets air leak a little bit and it adds even more downforce so like without this they say it’s like a 50 60 increase in downforce with this it’s

Like 80 85. just from this little piece so we got really obsessed with arrow when we started doing all these uh time attack changes so what other Arrow pieces did you guys add to this we’ve got the bigger rear diffuser so with this rule set we’re allowed to just

Basically do whatever we want underneath the car so we went a lot more forward we’re now we did the bumper cut all the way across instead of we used to have it just here but now we’re able to vent the rear wheels so that the air pressure

Inside the wheel well can be relieved as much as possible and then what about the front Arrow was so same idea relieving the air pressure inside the wheel wells uh we did the vented Hood so as you guys probably know it’s really cool on the Supra that the

Fender is the hood so it was actually pretty easy to incorporate that and then underneath the splitter we’ve got the high downforce tunnels that are going into the wheel well so that also helps push the air out and it creates a a negative pressure Zone let’s talk

About motor motor what what is the is this a Savon Hood this is a vis oh Vis okay and then you guys just modified it correct Vents and then this vent so the question is at sea level how much power are you making so we’re limited so that’s one thing we’re worried about

Um we’re only making probably 600 wheel horsepower it’s it’s weird saying only 600 but you know we’ve got cars here that are making 15 1600 horsepower but yeah we don’t we’re still running a stock transmission which is limiting our torque capabilities and obviously how much power we can Fuel and all that

Stuff that we can make out of the car so running on the stock trans we’ve got an E60 mixture uh pure stage 2 Turbo and a port injection and then so 600 does that mean you can make 600 up here too in the in altitude we’re gonna find out we’re gonna find

Out there’s still something yeah literally figure out yeah literally after this we’re gonna load it back up and it’ll head over to Pikes Peak International Raceway and do some logs and hopefully the tuner gives us some good news okay but he’s very confident so yeah all right and then um in terms

Of cooling I see you have a lot of good CSF goodies too yeah so the cool thing is this car was actually the development car for a lot of the CSF cooling especially the manifold the one-piece Billet manifold that incorporates the port injection so that’s one of the

First pieces and it helps a lot with with the cooling what about suspension we’re running MCS two-way coilovers with remote reservoirs we’re gonna upgrade to three ways but we just didn’t have time so we’re actually first set up since we’re from SoCal we put the streets of Willow

Set up on the car thinking like hey that’s kind of the closest kind of turns and everything we really love the setup for streets so hopefully it works out on the mountain yeah hopefully that works out I mean I’ve watched zwart tests on streets too oh okay so I’m assuming that

There’s something to shoot tests there too right in terms of like um it being bumpy and the surface also being a little bit Dusty yeah and it’s got some elevated turns yeah and then also for Zora when they were testing they’re testing like um lock to lock

Like how much it can actually turn like a GT2 can actually get any right corner down but uh uh so then what about breaks we’re running the AP Racing six point uh front 380 just on the front so it’s weird on the Supra because when we built

This car there were no rears available stock rears so as you guys know if you guys own a Supra you get you get the base model the premium and then the Lim or the launch which is the same as a premium unfortunately we’re still stuck

On the base rear brakes so it’s like 10 millimeters smaller than the Premium Edition but we were running the CSG pads on there so very aggressive brake pad and Titan seven Wheels yes what what tire setup is it 275 75 40 squared yeah and then we’ve got a set of

295s a new compound that we’ll be trying out okay yeah you could potentially go wider than 295s huh we could in the rear yeah but with our arrow set up in the front we’re worried about you know if we go 295 or 305 it might cause rubbing when you’re doing the max

Yeah let’s talk about the interior this is great I mean in terms of like you guys going racing on a budget yeah this is it right here this has built everything yourself yeah you built everything in-house in a matter of including the cage it took two weeks yeah that that’s it yeah

Crazy okay so you guys build your own cage yeah I’m assuming after this race you guys will probably take it apart and powder coat it yeah I don’t think we’re gonna take it apart well we mean like the dash we might take all that out and then

I don’t we haven’t picked the color yet but we’ll see I’m thinking silver and then this is a uh something that you guys actually have to do for um Pikes Peak per Pikes Peak rules yeah firewall yeah that was actually this uh firewall that separates the driver from

The fuel cell uh was the hardest part of the fabrication because not only did you have to go in there it had to fit with the cage and then we had to follow all the all the rulebook specs for it and yeah that that is something unique I

Feel like to the Supra because it’s a open back I don’t even know what you call that open back Coupe where the fuel cell is open whereas in if you’re in a coupe or actual Coop or a sedan all you have to do is plug in that you know that

Part of the back seat and then it’s good yeah yeah essentially it is kind of like a hatchback it is yeah yeah this is kind of a interesting thing you are able to retain a lot of the stock functions here with the steering wheel setup yeah so we

Didn’t want to go Standalone with the amount of time that we had and especially at the power level that we’re running there’s really no need for the Standalone so the risk to benefit Factor was not worth it so I wanted to keep the ECU keep all the factory kind of

Functions and you know on these cars so much is done through the iDrive so we wanted to retain that for sure and a lot of the inspiration in here was let’s get it as close to the factory super GT4 car so I wanted to emulate that as much as

Possible wait so you’re telling me you have to turn off traction control when you turn this on yeah yeah you have to turn off so like a lot of the functionality is still there yes this is it’s actually all still there does it still have air kind

Of shank no we took the Ducks out oh God we still have the compressor on the engine really yeah you can’t take that off we could have but we didn’t have time so that’s so cool yeah if if the speakers were still in I could be bumping music

Up the mountain if I wanted to that’s awesome but this thing makes its own music this thing sounds really good oh thank you thank you ah yeah this is super cool we were able to keep this with the battle arrows really nice bracket and then we’ve got the magnetic

Panels from JQ works so these are awesome you need to get these on your car yeah that would be super cool yeah I love that so and you guys have a whole switch panel here now yeah so we’re ready to add all these different things but for Pikes we’re just using this one

For the fuel what are you going to do with a key so you actually have to have the key to start it it’s a yeah and I don’t know what we’re gonna do I’m probably gonna double side tape it to something yeah hopefully it stays here

Most of the time it finds its way under the seat or it’s like yeah I love that you guys still have cup holders I think that’s so cool yeah well I don’t want to hold you guys up I know you guys have to go back to uh Pikes Peak

International Raceway to do testing yeah but we’re going to be following you the whole week awesome you can’t get rid of us we’re going to be getting as many nice video and stills of this thing but this is this is it that was the big relief for today yeah passing Tech yeah

So cool awesome I’m so I’m so happy for you guys I can’t wait for you you are a rookie too yes first year so we’ll see be nice to be fastest rookie I’d be happy with that but really I just want to cross the line yeah yeah just do that

Yeah it’s gonna be epic um breakfast I I can’t wait to see it yeah and thanks for all your help with the advice so no no I mean for me it’s so such a visual thing you know for you guys it’s real life yeah you’re you’re up

There you’re actually Racing for me it’s just the inspiration part of what this race actually represents all of it you know the cars the people the culture the history yeah that that’s what I love about it and you know I’m so glad that you guys are a part of the story now

Thank you dude thank you cool all right hey thanks for watching if you want to support us directly go to larrychenprince.com I print and sign every single one of these this is the perfect gift or it’s the perfect piece of art for your wall What’s up We need me [Applause]