Initial D

Originally, Initial D was a manga written by Japanese author Shuichi Shigeno that has been featured in Kodansha’s Young Magazine since 1995. Since Initial D’s inception, Initial D has been adapted into a long-running anime series, live action film, and video games.

The Initial D anime and manga focus on the world of Japanese underground mountain-pass street racing known as touge racing where drifting is key to maintaining speed and winning races. In order to stay true to street racing and drifting culture, Initial D producers hired street racing and drifting legend Keiichi “Drift King” Tsuchiya to their editorial staff.

Initial D’s story takes place in the Japanese prefecture of Gunma and focuses on main character Takumi “Tak” Fujiwara and his Toyota Corolla AE86. Takumi is an unassuming teenager who has a job as a tofu delivery boy. His ex-racer dad has been sending Takumi on tofu deliveries up the winding Mt. Akina road while teaching him the skills needed for driving touge – drifting techniques.

When local street racer, and former Bosozuku gang leader, Keisuke Takahashi of the infamous Red Suns racing team witnesses Takumi’s expert drift skill, he challenges Takumi to a race. With incredible drifting technique and a drift ready AE86, Takumi beats Keisuke’s Mazda FD3S RX-7 and unwittingly enters into the life of underground street racing. Word quickly spreads of Takumi’s win and then street racers begin seeking him out to battle his AE86 on the touge.

The Initial D franchise is a must see for any street racing and drifting fan.

List of Initial D Releases

Manga:

• Initial D Manga Japanese Release - 35 Volumes (1995 - new volume released every 5 months).
• Initial D Manga Tokyopop Release - 24 Volumes (2002 - new volume released every 3 months).

Anime:

• Initial D First Stage - 26 episodes (1998)
• Initial D Second Stage - 13 episodes (1999)
• Initial D Extra Stage OAV - 2 episodes side-story focusing on Impact Blue (2000)
• Initial D Third Stage - 2 hour movie (2001)
• Initial D Battle Stage - 50 minute movie (2002)
• Initial D Fourth Stage - 24 episodes (2004-2006)
• Initial D Battle Stage 2

Initial D Video Games:

• Initial D Arcade Stage Version 1 (Arcade)
• Initial D Arcade Stage Version 2 (Arcade)
• Initial D Arcade Stage Version 3 (Arcade)
• Initial D Arcade Stage Version 4 (Arcade)
• Initial D (Sega Saturn)
• Initial D (Sony PS1)
• Initial D Special Stage (Sony PS2)
• Initial D Mountain Vengeance (PC)
• Initial D Street Stage (Sony PSP)
• Initial D Gaiden (Nintendo Game Boy)
• Initial D Another Stage (Nintendo GBA)
• Initial D Collectible Card Game (Collectible Card Game)

Touge

Touge is a Japanese word literally meaning “pass” as in mountain pass or a road between two mountains. Touge refers to the narrow winding mountain roads.

Due to steep elevation changes, a series of turns and bends, sometimes called cut backs, is needed to provide access to and from the higher elevations. Aside from construction limitations, like not being able to pave a road straight up the side of a mountain, the winding road is intended as a safety measure - typically preventing drivers from reaching extreme speeds while on the mountain.

Nevertheless, street racers and motorsport enthusiasts alike seek to test their drifting skills on the touge. Eventually, these touge racers began to adopt driving techniques used by rally drivers to help maintain their momentum through the corners. From touge racing, drifting was born.

Touge racing typically has two stages — an uphill and a downhill tsuiso battle. One car leads the race uphill, while the other car leads the downhill stage. Since touge races feature narrow mountain roads, overtaking is extremely difficult and unsafe so another means of winning is by never letting the lead car brake away from your front bumper when you are chasing. The lead car wins if the space between the cars increases considerably. If any car spins out or crashes, the other driver wins the race.

Although illegal, touge racers take precautions like forming roadblocks while other drivers are racing – street racers don’t want to wreck their cars or hurt other people.

Touge racing has become popular outside of Japan in part to drifting entertainment like Initial D anime and manga.

Drifting Not Drafting

Drifting occurs when vehicle momentum or horsepower exceeds tire traction, causing the car to slide sideways. Through driver skill and certain car modifications like suspension and LSD, drifting is utilized to maintain higher rates of speed through corners.

Drafting on the other hand is a racing technique that gains aerodynamic advantage by following closely behind a lead vehicle. Common to NASCAR, drafting reduces the average energy required to maintain a certain speed since the lead car is blocking wind, creating a slipstream that decreases drag for the chase car or cars.

During a Tsuiso Battle (tandem drift battle) the chase car wants to stay as close to the lead drift car as possible and even pass if the option is available. So during a tandem drift battle, drafting is encouraged.

In drifting, making contact with another car can result in disqualification and is usually frowned upon by drifters and drift teams. In NASCAR however, contact is permitted and is known as bump drafting.

Bump drafting is similar to normal drafting but when the chase car pulls up behind the lead car, it bumps into the rear and pushes it forward to maintain the momentum it has built up. When done in side by side traffic on a straightaway, bump drafting can help the lead car pass and allows the chase car to follow through as well.

Done roughly or executed at a particular angle, bump drafting is more like a law enforcement PIT maneuver. It can destabilize the lead car and sometimes cause a crash. Bump drafting in this manner is known as slam drafting. To protect drivers against slam drafting, NASCAR has attempted to limit the bracing on bumpers and introduced “no bump zones” on certain portions of racetracks where bump drafting is common.

Time Attack

Time Attack

Time Attack is a race to secure the fastest lap time possible on a designated circuit or section of track. Also referred to as time trail, tuner battle, or super lap, a time attack is used to evaluate car performance in real racing applications. Similar to a qualifying lap, the higher average speed you maintain the faster your lap time, so drifting around certain corners can save valuable time.

The term time attack comes from Japan where time attack events are organized by the Japanese automotive media to give top JDM aftermarket tuning manufactures like HKS, Top Secret, Trust (GReddy), and VeilSide an arena to battle their factory tuned cars. Tsukuba circuit is the most popular racetrack in Japan for time attack events.
As in NASCAR, the cars in a time attack start off under a full rolling start. Cars are timed with a transponder device inside the vehicle that works with the circuits internal system used in normal racing. As the car passes a beam the timing begins and runs until the car completes a lap. Numbers are allocated to cars to ensure the times are correctly recorded.

Gymkhana

Gymkhana

Gymkhana is a timed automotive obstacle course. Similar to autocross, gymkhana events use traffic cones to outline the track and racers take turns trying to secure the fastest lap time possible. Gymkhana courses have short straightaways and complicated technical sections that feature figure eights, specially marked cones that require a driver to reverse through them, and parking boxes that require drivers to slide into them.  Drifting technique is used to save drivers precious seconds. Gymkhana places emphasis on car handling and driver skill instead of horsepower.

FF Drifting (Front-engine, Front-wheel drive)

FF Drifting

Drifting a FF (Front-engine, Front-wheel drive) car is known as “ass dragging” by drifting purists, but drifting is possible by definition and fun. Since the rear wheels on a FF car freely turn without a transmission, they are easy to lock up when you pull the e-brake, given your rear brake pads are in good shape.
In Japan, there are front-wheel drive cars competing in the D1 Street Legal series and Keisuke Hatakeyama has competed in the Falken sponsored Honda Civic EF hatch in Formula Drift. They don’t win, but they are out there competing and having fun. Don’t let people discourage you from having fun in your FF car, just pop your collar and shake them drift haters off!
The technique I’ve outlined for FF drifting is very close to the basic E-brake drift. One thing to consider when driving a FF car is that under high speed they tend to understeer – or experience a loss of traction in the FRONT tires (opposite of oversteer). With this in mind, you need to stay close to the corner entrance or you might find yourself leaving the road when exiting the corner.

Front-Wheel Drive Drifting Sequence:

1. Brake for upcoming corner – This transfers vehicle weight to the front wheels for traction while lightening the rear end - enabling the rear wheels to lock up more freely once the e-brake is pulled.
2. Create further weight transfer by steering away from the corner momentarily in a feinting motion (Feint Drift)
3. Turn the steering wheel to enter corner – You got to tell the car what direction it’s going.
4. Pull the e-brake and hold for 1 second – This will lock the rear wheels causing the rear end to slide (oversteer). Now you are drifting! Most likely you will have to use the e-brake throughout the corner to keep the car sliding, otherwise the rear end will simply fall in line with the front wheels – neutralizing any drift angle.
5. Release the e-brake.
6. Countersteer - Countersteering is turning the steering wheel in the opposite direction that you first turned the steering wheel in - to initiate the turn. For example: Say you are about to drift a right hand turn. When entering the corner you turn the steering wheel to the RIGHT to get the car going in that direction. Once the car starts sliding, you would then turn the steering wheel to the LEFT to counter the skid.
7. Now wait until the car is facing the corner exit and floor it. Smoke those front tires! How hard you step on the gas depends how much you are countersteering and sliding. Good thing about FF cars is that the car will follow the front wheels – hence the “ass dragging.”

If this front-wheel drive drift sequence seems complicated, just find a patch of dirt or other low grip surface away from other people, cut the wheel at about 20 mph, and pull the e-brake. This will give you a good idea of what it feels like when the rear end of a car starts to slide.
Some people may interpret a front-wheel drive drift as a powerslide, but the definition of powerslide in reference to motorsports refers to a Power Over Drift – or excess use of throttle to induce oversteer when exiting a corner.
By definition drifting is initiating oversteer and controlling it, so it doesn’t matter if a car is FWD, AWD, or RWD it’s all drifting. Furthermore, Drift King says, “You can drift anything with 4 wheels!” No one is going to mistake you for Drift King and you’re not going to be able to hold a long continuous sideways drift like a rear-wheel drive car, but you can have some fun. You can also perform 180 u-turn slides using this technique at lower speeds.

Limited Slip Differential aka LSD

Limited Slip Differential

Limited Slip Differential, or LSD, is a type of axle gearing that allows both wheels sharing an axel to lock up and spin at the same time when one wheel starts to slip. For this reason, limited slip differentials allow power to be transferred to the wheel with the most traction. LSD maximizes traction and makes controlling oversteer easier like when drifting. LSD is essential to building a drift car.

Advantages of limited slip differential include less inside wheelspin when accelerating out of a tight corner and more horsepower to the ground. Suspension tuning is needed to gain all the benefits of a limited slip differential. In drift cars, coil over damper kits and pillow ball upper mounts for camber correction are typically the suspension choice.The two main types of limited slip differentials are torque sensitive mechanical LSDs like clutch and geared based LSDs, and speed sensitive hydraulically controlled LSDs like viscous and gerotor pump LSDs.Clutch type limited slip differentials respond to driveshaft torque. The more driveshaft torque present, the harder the clutches are pressed together and the more closely the drive wheels are coupled to each other. Torque-sensitive geared mechanical limited slip differentials utilize worm gears to detect torque and lock the wheels accordingly. Geared LSDs are dependent on torque, not the speed difference between wheels.Viscous limited slip differentials use silicone-based hydraulic oils and stacks of interlocking (but non-touching) perforated discs to lock the differential. Half of the discs are connected to the inner driveshaft and the other half is connected to the outer differential carrier. When under the stress the high torque, the hydraulic oil thickens and fills the gap between the discs effectively locking the discs together and locking the differential. Gerotor pumps work by hydraulically compressing a clutch pack. When one wheel starts to slip, the pump pressurizes hydraulic fluid into the clutch pack area providing frictional resistance that transfers torque to the wheel with traction.There are also electronic limited slip differential systems that use anti-lock brake sensors to electronically monitor wheel speed. If one of the wheels begins to rotate faster than the other, the computer briefly applies the brake to that wheel.Another form of final drive that achieves a similar effect to a limited slip differential is called a spool that consists of a pinion and ring gear only. The axle is one solid piece. A mini-spool is similar, replacing the usual differential center with a solid piece, while retaining the factory axles. A third option, popular with the drifting community, is welding the spider gears together in the factory differential and using the stock axels. A locking differential, or locker, is often used in off-road 4WD vehicles. In the default setting, both wheels are locked. A selectable locker is typically used by street cars that also drag race. On the street, the car would use the open differential setting and later be locked at the drag strip by compressed air, a cable, electric actuator, or hydraulic fluid locking mechanism.

If you want to know if your car has LSD, here is how to find out. Do a burnout and see if your car left one or two tire marks. 2 tire marks = LSD. If you know your car has a limited slip differential and it only leaves one tire mark, the LSD may need to be serviced or replaced.