Keisuke Takahashi is the series' first real opponent, and he loses in its opening chapters. A former bōsōzoku gang member, he was brought into street racing by his older brother Ryosuke and became the second-fastest driver in Ryosuke's team, the Akagi RedSuns. Heading home down Akina one night, he is caught by a panda-coloured AE86 that drifts through a corner faster than he can follow; he spins, and spends the next days hunting the car around the mountain. When the RedSuns race the local team, the Eight-Six turns up again, loses ground on every straight, catches up in every corner, and passes him.
Elsewhere he keeps winning. He beats Takeshi Nakazato's GT-R on Myogi when rain arrives late in the race, then wins a hillclimb against Emperor's Seiji Iwaki on Akagi. When Ryosuke dissolves the RedSuns and forms Project D, Keisuke becomes its uphill ace, and his brother's coaching turns a driver known for racing on emotion into one who drives with control. The FD changes too: after an oil slick at Tsuchisaka puts it into a guardrail, it comes back wearing an RE Amemiya bonnet, aero kit and headlights.
Mazda announced the third-generation RX-7 in October 1991 and began selling it in Japan that December through its Efini channel, as the Efini RX-7; the Type R was the lightweight sports model. The body came out of an internal competition between Mazda's four design studios, won by the one in Irvine, where Wu-huang Chin drew it with help from Tom Matano. Its 13B-REW rotary was the first mass-produced sequential twin-turbo exported from Japan: one turbo works from low revs, the second takes over in the upper half of the range with the changeover at 4,500 rpm, and under hard driving the jump in power there forced drivers to anticipate oversteer in corners. It made 255 PS in 1992 and 280 PS by the end of production in 2002. Keisuke's is Competition Yellow Mica, estimated at 350 PS in the manga's specification panel.
Aoshima's Snap Kit No. CM-2 is the FD at 1/32 in 34 parts, moulded in colour so the glossy yellow body needs no paint, and built without glue. Aoshima lists a custom specification — 17-inch wheels and tyres, rear wing, custom steering wheel and sports muffler — with an optional lowered stance and pop-up headlights that can be built open or closed. It was announced alongside Takumi's Hachiroku in June 2023 as the first character models in Aoshima's Snap Kit range and came out that November; Aoshima's current listing, under a new JAN, is dated November 2025.