Unfortunatley not that Dave. I crewed for the opposition. One of my best friends is Eric Van Cleef, so it was his team. Until they changed the rules and made the qualifying driver start the car, we were on the pole or outside pole in every race over a 2 year period, and tied for most wins in '97, and won the championship in '96 with the NA car (before the TT car arrived to us the next year). We had both an NA and TT car, and they were both at all the races. Usually the NA car was a rental after '96, and was destroyed at Road Atlanta during '98 before the first turn, before the race started.
Funny thing is, most people have no idea how good these cars are. They're just like a big Miata, only no one usually believes it. Ballistic fast, easy to drive, unreal reliability (we never had to do anything other than routine maintenance), and super fun to drive on a road course. The first time I drove it, I was stunned, it was nothing like what I was used to racing at the time. The Supra was the only car in the field that had to weight more than stock (a couple of hundred pounds), have restrictions on turbo boost (less than stock pressures, and it was monitored), and have smaller wheels and tires than it left the factory with. It was still very competitive, and could flat out-out corner every car there. It's only real issue was it had to stop for fuel more often than every car except the RX7's, which were a lot more thirsty than the Supra even.
By contrast, the BMWs were allowed a VERY significant weight break, as were the RX7s, and the M3s got to run full euro specs, including a big cam change.
After the '98 season, the Supra was sold after Toyota quit supporting it due to its demise, and we volunteered to start Toyota's Nascar program and work with them to get the car through all the hoops nessecary to compete, which took about 2 years. We were the first ones to run a Toyota in Nascar, the Goody's Dash series, but that's another story.
As for Dave Shardt, an intersting observation from him. After '99 I believe, he switched to a Porsche, but always maintained the Toyota was much faster, especially in a straight line, but Porsche was a more responsive when he needed something. If something broke on the car, they would not only supply a new part, but find out why the part broke in the first place.
As for Eric, after a couple of years off for family and business time, he's driving an RX8 this year in SCCA, but his last car was a NA Supra in T2. It's the old CART-PPG Pace car. I've been fortunate to drive it on numerous occasions, and it's simply a blast to drive. Just like the TT, you can do anything with it, use all the curbs, something you have to be careful in with something like an M3, and really just beat the crap out of it. Way fun.
