Nobuhiko Akiyama

Nobuhiko Akiyama (秋山 延彦 Akiyama Nobuhiko, known as Nobu in the Tokyopop version) is the leader of the Northern Saitama Alliance. He is very intelligent and analytical however his skills as a driver, are not very good. Because of this, he usually recruits other highly skilled drivers and uses his technical data to further tune their cars according to each course. Nobuhiko did race against Takumi Fujiwara once on the downhill, but was left behind after the first hairpin and only because Takumi was letting him keep up, upon Ryosuke Takahashi's instruction. It is revealed that Nobuhiko is Wataru Akiyama's cousin (as they share the same surname and looks pretty similar). Kazumi Akiyama mentioned he lives in Higashimatsuyama, Saitama. He also recruited Sakamoto to the Northern Saitama Alliance in an attempt to defeat Takumi Fujiwara.

Trivia

 * In the Fifth Stage and Final Stage anime, Nobuhiko, alongside his cousin Wataru and fellow Northern Saitama Ally Sakamoto, watched Project D's battle against Sidewinder.
 * It is unknown what happened to Kyoko Iwase during the Sidewinder battle, but it can be presumed that she couldn't watch the battle alongside Nobuhiko for unknown reasons.
 * He is the first character to race in a sedan, as most of the characters from the series use JDM cars as their primary mode of racing. The second is a group of Altezza guys in Extra Stage 2.