Evos and NSXs always did well in these battles. I'm a Subaru guy and it has always been painful to see WRXs and STIs understeering to the back of the pack on almost every episode. This show really taught you about what each car could do. I love it.
i know im kinda late but i watch a lot of these episodes and found that Subarus actually still win a lot of times against various other cars like these: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6Ao_-0qTXXo.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-W6zCA4P9MkA.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6Ao_-0qTXXo.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-IHjKyUqT4Qw.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nbneyVqZaD0.html And also various other touge battles that are not on Tsukuba
They were RE-01s which aren't standard tires from factory while all the other cars had the factory tires which I assume had better grip levels despite that the RE-01s are meant to be gripper like Advan Neovas during that era. I'd assume because the RE-01s are summer performance tire and wouldn't suit well with a stock car without fine tuning beforehand.