Nick Robinson’s 10:48.094 run up Pikes Peak in a 500-hp Acura TLX has survived seven years of challengers. Weather, track conditions, and sheer altitude have conspired to protect that front-wheel-drive record since 2018. On June 21, Acura sends one of its own to finally kill it.
Formula Drift champion Dai Yoshihara will pilot an Acura Integra Type S DE5 in the Time Attack 1 class, threading 156 turns across 12.42 miles of Colorado mountain road that tops out at 14,115 feet. That’s altitude where turbocharged engines gasp and drivers rely on muscle memory because the oxygen sure isn’t helping cognition.
The irony isn’t lost: the record Yoshihara is chasing belongs to a fellow Acura driver. This is an internal assassination, corporate-sanctioned and carefully engineered. Acura has spent nearly two decades on this mountain, and the brand clearly decided that if anyone is going to dethrone Robinson, it should be family.
Yoshihara’s weapon is a race-prepped Integra Type S with a modified turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder pushing north of 360 horsepower. That’s 140 fewer horses than Robinson’s TLX had, which tells you Acura is betting on chassis dynamics, weight savings, and a sequential paddle-shifted six-speed to close the gap. The high-altitude package includes a revised intake, upgraded charge piping, and an additional intercooler — all attempts to claw back the power that thin air steals from forced-induction engines.
Three hundred sixty horsepower against a record set by 500. The math only works if the Integra Type S is a sharper tool than the TLX was, and if Yoshihara can find time in places Robinson couldn’t.
Acura also wove its Olympic sponsorship into the weekend. U.S. bobsled pilot and world champion Kaysha Love will drive the official pace car, an Acura MDX Type S, up the mountain before the competition runs. Love’s day job involves hurtling downhill in a sled at 90 mph, not climbing uphill in a three-row luxury SUV. The crossover is cute, if slightly forced.
Still, the real story is the record attempt. Pikes Peak doesn’t care about partnerships or press releases. The mountain has humbled factory efforts from manufacturers with far deeper motorsport budgets than Acura’s.
Weather rolls in without warning. A single mistake above the treeline, where guardrails are a suggestion and gravity is not, ends runs and occasionally careers. Multiple Acura attempts since 2018 have come close and walked away empty.
Yoshihara knows the mountain. He’s raced here before, and his drift background gives him an unusual comfort level with a car stepping out at speed. But Pikes Peak rewards different instincts — relentless precision over 156 corners, not heroic saves. The run is a single shot, no second chances.
Robinson’s seven-year-old time remains the number to beat. If Yoshihara pulls it off in a car with significantly less power, it will say something real about how far the Integra Type S platform has come. If the mountain wins again, it will say something the mountain has been saying since 1916: come back next year and try harder.
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