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Mount akina is the most well known touge in existence. Popularised by the street racing manga initial d, this touge is adored by racers of all types. In real life, arcades, and simulators - mount akina is synonymous with Japanese street racing. If you’ve ever tried touge racing,there’s a decent chance your first experience took place on this infamous stretch of road. But, Mount Akina is swear words im not allowed to put in the description
Whenever we drive fast on a road, we intuitively treat it as a racetrack. From finding the racing line,the apexes of each corner, locations for potential overtakes and of course all of the frigging pot holes . Therefore, for us to understand why mount akina is a terrible touge, we need to look at it like it is a racetrack - and discuss what makes a racetrack great, or in this case, not so great.
Race Track Design Rule #1 - Technical difficulty. When designing a race track, the most crucial design element is it’s difficulty. This can be a fine balancing act between making a bland track, or one that is simply too difficult.
Mount akina isn’t particularly difficult, in fact, id go so far as to say it’s boring - no matter how loud you blast eurobeat. In essence, it’s just a bunch of long, bland straights connected via hairpins. Sure, there are a few off kilter corners that can be challenging the first few times you attack them, but, that’s as far as it goes. No, literally, that is as far as the roads of akina go. There’s nothing else to it. As a driver, your biggest challenge with akina is the ability to get a good launch from hairpins. You will gain the most time on straights, as we found out in my racing lines video.
For me personally, Akina simply isn’t stimulating enough to even keep me interested enough to finish the run. I often find myself becoming bored about halfway down, incidentally when Im driving on one of those massive long straights. The worst part is that this is actually true. In my opinion, it doesn’t offer enough of a challenge to be secured as a great touge. There are way more engaging touges, which offer more smiles per hour than akina.
If you want a touge that is properly technically difficult, I can wholly recommend Nagao & Usui. Usui is easily in my top 3 touges, purely because it flows so well. Usui feels like it was purpose built as a road to race on. You can pretty much drive the entire thing on instinct. Not only does it have flow, but it has a huge variety of corners too. From right angles, to double apexes and even some acute hairpins. Just look at those little fellas.
Nagao is cut from the same cloth, but in my opinion, it’s just that little bit more exciting. This is due to the cambered or banked corners. They make Nagao a pleasure to drive on, as the car settles into these corners and allows you to really push it to the limit without worrying too much about losing the rear end. It almost feels like a rollercoaster, with each corner cradling you through. It feels incredible in the least weird way possible.
Race Track Design Rule #2 - Low margin for error. Needless to say, the most exhilerating races and battles occur when drivers are pushed to their limit and are punished when mistakes are made. No, not with speeding tickets - by crashing, or at the very least spinning out.
Seperating drivers at a high level is tough, and turning up the head by allowing a low margin for error is important.
Again, mount akina falls short here. Akina is a relatively wide road. It only really tightens up on the slow corners, which is almsot the exact opposite of what you want if you’re looking for a really engaging touge. The road doesn’t tighten and constrict like many great do, in fact, it only gets wider.
While some may enjoy this - and it may be better for bigger, more chad cars, ultimately it does make things feel again, quite bland. If you lose grip on akina
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