I live in the in the San Francisco Bay Area of California and if there is one thing we have in abudance, it's steep hills.
I feel that the Mazda 3 has adequate passing power on inclines. Trust me when I say that driving through the streets of San Francisco with a manual will begin to tire you out during stop and go traffic through it's steep hilly streets. I have a 5-spd manual sedan with the 2.3 liter engine in it. I have no problems passing most other cars on steep inclines. I usually pass slower vehicles on inclines when I can because I hate having to stop and go on hills.
What kind of car do you have rsx_r04?
If you have an automatic and you were driving in automatic mode, you wouldn't stand a chance of passing that integra if it was a manual. If you used your manumatic shifter, you might have had a chance. If you have the 3i sedan, well, from my test drive of it, it doesn't have enough get-up-and-go like the 3s.
And the other question that begs to be asked, what kind of Integra was it? If it was the rare Type-R Integra, well you could forget about beating it with a stock Mazda 3s. If it was turbo'ed or modified for any more power, that could also be the case. But then again, if the Integra's intention was to do a flyby and keep on accelerating, it would of course, taken you 6-8 or even more seconds to catch up to him.