Touge
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Touge is a Japanese word meaning "pass", being a noun, not a verb. The Japanese 峠 is spelled tōge. It refers to the mountain pass or a narrow road with many turns. The reason this term is so popular in places outside of Japan is due to the street racing that goes on, on these roads.
For touge racing team battling, each race has two stages - an uphill and a downhill battle. One car leads the race during the uphill stage, with the second car leading the downhill. Because most touge races feature narrow tracks, passing is very difficult and sometimes impossible.
The lead car wins if the gap between the cars increases -- the following car wins if the gap stays the same from start to finish.
Mostly, RWD coupe cars (Silvia, 180SX, Skyline GT-S, Sprinter Levin/Trueno (AE86), Supra A70-A80 MR2, RX-7, S2000 etc) are used for touge racing, with some FWDs (Integra type R, Civic type R, etc), as well as some 4WDs (Lancer, Impreza, GT-R, etc) becoming more and more popular.
Challenge for a battle on the road
In the mountains of Japan at night, touge racers will be cruising on the road enjoying the ride. While doing so, they sometimes look for a potential touge battle. The battle is always between two cars.When a racer has decided to battle a car while on the road, he will tightly tailgate a potential racer and turn on the signal light for the driver in front, indicating for a pass. If the car in front refuses to pull aside for the overtaking and starts to speed up, the battle begins.
Another way is to flash the night lights a few times behind the car. If the car in front speeds up, the duel begins.
After awhile, if the challenger cannot keep up with the chase, he loses the race. If he can keep up with the car in front closely, he wins the battle. If the challenger somehow overtakes the car in front, which seldom happens but is possible, he wins the race.
Another way to decide the fate of the battle is if the loser crashes the car badly and is unable to continue.
General pointers for touge racing
The following are some general pointers, though they might be not be true in some circumstances:
- Avoid driving on leaves, water, snow, and sand, as they may cause tire slippage.
- During day racing, avoid shadowed areas of the road - as it could upset the handling of the car.
- Grip race as much as possible, only drift/slide when necessary.
- Drifting helps to block off an advancing car during cornering, but it will be slow coming out of the corner exit.
- Avoid smoking the tires or burnout.
- Cornering Out-In-Out (the ideal cornering line) might not be possible.
- Always take the ideal line for the course.
- Going slow in a corner might help to setup faster cornering in the next corner, which might gain a faster overall time.
- The power of the car in downhill battles does not necessarily dictate the outcome.
- The right tires and the right suspension setting are important.
- Having an LSD might be an advantage.
- Turbo is generally good for uphill.
- The oversteering and understeering of the car should be kept to the minimum
- Having a well balanced car is important as well.
Drifting and touge
In the touge scene, many "hashiriya"s (Japanese: 走り屋, meaning street racers or road racers in this case) no longer race. Instead of racing, they constantly drift their cars as a way to show-off and perfect their driving skill. These days, local drivers will gather together in the mountain and drift together as a team. They do runs on the windy road as a stream of cars, drifting at every corners for fun and thrill. They no longer have the competitiveness in racing but rather putting their interests on skill.
In a general sense these days, the fastest drifter at a local touge is the fastest racer in there. Take a view on this perspective: if a driver can drive fast while at the same time drifting on the windy roads, he is very likely to possess the driving skill and the course knowledge to be the fastest car racer there. That is the general assumption in the touge scene (though this assumption might not be true in reality).
The term "drift battle" is commonly substituted for "touge battle", but it important to note that in the touge, drivers utlilize drifting intentionally to go faster around corners, but will chose not to drift grip in others in a race.
External links
- [Motoring Underground], discussion forums on competitive driving subjects such as track, autoX and touge
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