Where's the Codemasters love? For me, the GRID and DiRT series both strike the best balance between realism and arcadey fun. Huge shame they were bought out by EA.
Also, don't hate me but Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is kind of a better Mario Kart. Though I haven't played MK8.
OG DiRT felt good in a way that modern games just can't match. I don't dare go back and play it again because I did that with OG need for speed underground and absolutely hated it. Picked up some DiRT sequel a while back on the ps store and it didn't feel great either.
I played Dirt 2 & 3 and enjoyed them. 2 leaned more into actual rally racing (linear course with a copilot) and I was a bit slow to warm up to that but ended up quite liking it. 3 added a lot more Gymkhana which seemed a bit familiar from drift racing but ended up being even more challenging and fun IMO. Both are a far cry from traditional racing (and the games include plenty of that too) but I love the variety.