Shinji Inui  

, 乾 信司

Shinji Inui is the driver of Sidewinder's downhill racing team. Despite appearing young and possibly younger than Takumi, he seems highly intelligent. Shinji shares similarities with Takumi in that he has little interest in racing and began driving at an early age. His car is a notchback coupe variant of the AE86 Trueno, which belonged to his late father. This makes him the third character to drive an AE86 model, following Wataru Levin's AE86.