What is your favorite retro racing game?

Road Rash and Skitchin are great. The Ayrton Senna games too, but I played those on Master System.
Network Q RAC Rally Championship on DOS is as good as it gets. Not the sequel International Rally Championship, which is far worse.
POD on Windows 9x. It has not held up and doesn’t look so good no matter how you get it working now. But if you played it back then those memories will live inside you forever.
Badlands on Commodore 64.
Moto Roader 2 on PC Engine.
NFS Porsche Unleashed/2000 (whatever they called it in your region) is the best NFS game.
- Love road rash!!
- Have you tried Old School Rally?
  
  It’s on my wish list.
  Along with some of the other throwback racers/rally games recently, I wish some dev who idolised Rally Championship was giving them a go. They all seem to want to target Sega Rally with a bit of Colin McRae sprinkled in. Which is still good, I love rally wherever I can get it.
- I had a demo version of POD and I played it a lot. Now I'm afraid to look it up lol. Is it really that bad?
  
  It’s maybe not so bad, but I spent ridiculous hours in POD, playing every track and in reverse, and with every car, and split screen multiplayer.
  I’ve never been able to get it to work with dgVoodoo, so the 3dfx crispness isn’t there. And I think it’s limited to 800x600 (but I remember it being somewhat prone to crashes above 640x480, this was about 10 years ago though). I also had a lot of audio popping which I couldn’t figure out what was wrong.
  It was such a great looking game to show off the Glide graphics on a 15” svga monitor, but for me it didn’t scale well on a 24 - 27” hi res screen.

Top Gear on SNES is pretty sick.
Cruisin’ USA was pretty great too.
- Top Gear's Las Vegas music is amazing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iwC7qpzpTUU

Probably F-Zero GX. Though I'm older than that, I wasn't playing racing games a lot before that. An older game I'd enjoyed a bit was POD (: Planet Of Death).
I've played Mario Kart quite a bit, starting back with super, but I can't really pick one as my favorite retro racing game, because the one I like the most is 8. Though Wii came close.
- You know, when I read retro racing I immediately thought of NFS and Pod, it's surprising to find someone who still remembers it.
- It's so satisfying when you get good at knocking out other racers. I remember as a teenager I would set my top speed to high and whittle down half of the other racers on my way to the front of the pack.
  It's easy to get in the top ten when you drop the racers count down fifteen places.
  
  Hell yeah. And then you've got one of those crazy hard story mode challenges where you pretty much have to destroy as many opponents you can to have enough juice to win. The one with Michael Chain and his gang.

Hydro Thunder on Dreamcast!
- The announcer shouting Hydro Thunder is so iconic
  
  The arcade version also has him yelling, "Press your boost button to start!" One of the first x86-based arcade games I can think of.

F-zero, Mario kart 64, diddy kong racing, rush 2049, cruisn USA, need for speed underground, that game at the arcade where 3 people can play and its on one screen with an isometric view
Edit: super off road
- F zero gx specifically is the goat
  
  I grew up in the original so that’s what has a special place in my heart. GX is sick though

Not sure it's my favourite, but Wipeout XL/2097 deserves a mention.
- Looking for a good t shirt with one of the team logos on it

Stunts was the best. You could draw your own circuits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunts_(video_game)
- Yes!! This and Fatal Racing was my entire early teens!

Rock and Roll Racing
Excite bike
- Excite bike
  We had endless hours of fun back in the day using the track builder and figuring out the exact spacing and combination of ramps to make your little dude crash out in a manner that flung his tumbling corpse the absolute maximum amount of distance. (Okay, so you never really die in Excitebike, but you know.) You can achieve significant hang time if you do it right.
  Random unsolicited video game trivia: First run editions of Excitebike were actually Japanese Famicom cartridges bodged into Famicom-to-NES cartridge converters. They're literally Japanese copies of the game, verbatim. This includes the theoretical ability to save out your track to the Famicom Data Recorder, which has only the minor wrinkle of never having been released in the US. This was baffling to us at the time, not understanding why the option was there when it self-evidently didn't work (but your Zelda cartridge could save just fine).
  Somehow my dad figured this out using the early Internet or Usenet or something, and then I had the actual answer. Still not actually being able to save, mind you, but at least I knew why you couldn't. Except nobody in the schoolyard would believe me.
  
  (I do know!)
- Rock & Roll Racing is top tier.
- excite bike always reminds me of visiting my grandma in daytona beach :)
  
  That's kid icarus and al uncer jrs racing for me.
  I remember my grandmother playing those games with us and she was exactly the person who would gesture with her hands as she was trying to play the game. When the character turned or jumped, her hands would do the same thing, she fling the controller out of her hands at least once that i remember trying to jump to a new platform in kids Icarus
- Honorable mentions
  Micro machines (that pool level!)
  Cobra Triangle

I was going to say SNES Mario Kart, but really I think it’s GC Mario Kart: Double Dash.

Single player: Stunt Car Racer on the Amiga
Multiplayer: Super Skidmarks also on the Amiga
- Stunt Car Racer can have two players on two Amigas with a serial cable connecting them.
  
  Now I'm jealous! Back when I was a kid, I loved it on C64 and pressed every single button to find some secret two player mode.
  
  I think it's cross platform too, to Atari and DOS
- try XJ220 on the Amiga for sense of speed

Wacky Wheels and Slipstream 5000.
- Yes! another vote for Wacky Wheels

F-Zero X
I crave speed and murder

wipeOut

Rc Pro Am was pretty great.

Road Rash is still one of my favorites! I plan to play through the PSX version at some point since I only ever got the chance to play the Genesis ones as a kid.

If Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed has become retro then it's that lol.

The first that come to mind are, in no particular order:
Need for speed hot pursuit (PC)
Sonic drift 2 (game gear)
Monaco F1 (mega drive)
Death Rally (PC)
Big Red Racing (PC)
Ballistics (PC)
WipeOut (psx)
The racing game in the Sega 4in1 pack (game gear)
Virtua Racing (mega drive)
Micromachines (mega drive)
Penny Racers (psx)
All very different from another.
- Almost forgot: carmageddon!
  
  Also another one that's totally different from the rest: Sonic R (PC)

Is Burnout old enough to be considered retro? 🤔
Because otherwise I, too, would have to say Road Rash.
Not much of a fan of racing, which is why my picks are what they are; Burnout has the awesome crash mode, and Road Rash is basically just a beat 'em up on wheels.
Although, I also really like Wipeout.

For me it’s Rad Racer on NES. Just very nostalgic! I love the sounds and the graphics just scream 80s/early 90s
- And you can press select and everything goes to anaglyph 3D...
  A random piece of trivia you can use to blow certain people's minds is that Rad Racer was developed by Square. Yes, that Square.
  
  I had no idea to either of those!

It makes me feel old to admit it's retro, but Gran Turismo on Playstation.

Rollcage
Re-Volt
Star Wars EP 1: Racer
NFS
NFS2
NFS Hot Pursuit
NFS Underground
Death Rally
Crash Team Racing
Hydro Thunder
SSX Tricky
San Francisco Rush 2049
Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing

Someone already beat me to Topgear, but I'm not seeing Mario Kart? Also GT2 on the PSX was great fun.

Lots of great ones mentioned here and while I don’t know if it’s my favorite, I have a deep soft spot for Super Off-Road. It has an incredible spatial sense and fluidity for its time and still holds up at any barcade.
- Yeah, fair. Me and my brother definitely played alot of that.

Outrun, especially Outrun 2. I like arcade style racers the most.
Also in that vein, San Francisco Rush.
- Yeah, rush 2049 was my favourite from the SF Rush series.

Gran Tourismo 2 and 4, Ridge Racer Type 4, Burnout 3 Takedown and NFSU2/MW. I like a lot of racing games but these are my favorite retro ones.

Mario kart is the only racing game I've ever been good at.
So, I'll take Mario Kart 64 as my best retro pick.

I suppose crash team racing would be considered retro now.
I spent countless hours finding all the secret paths and shortcuts

Rock n Roll racing for the SNES. Absolutely adore that game.
- Yeah, RnR, as well as SF Rush 2049 were basically my entire childhood.... so much so that I have been using this user name ever since. Though, if I could somehow also add in a tokyo extreme racer reference too without it getting too long or complicated.... or culturally insensitive... I loved those games too. Not enough proper Racing RPG games any more. You never start from the bottom and work your way up. Modern racing games just have you win cars in the lottery...
  
  SF Rush was an absolute riot!

Kirby Air Ride, though I'm reaching a bit here since the main racing mode isn't actually the part that's notable about this game. City Trial was where it's at.
For just pure racing, F-Zero GX.
- God City Trial was so much fun. Kinda wish Smash kept that mode that Smash DS had that was very similar to City Trial.
  The top down racing mini-game was also slept on.

Super Cars (Amiga) Also have a fond memory of Death Rally

that's like picking a favorite child! Power Drift, SEGA Rally Championship, Super Hang-On, and Hang-On GP, and OutRunners are all vying for that spot. Kirby Air Ride gets an honorable mention for the same reason as that other commenter, i can count on one hand how many times i've actually played the main racing mode

Re-Volt but also all the Crash Bandicoot were fire.

Crash team racing on PS1

Lotus III or Micro Machines probably. Maybe Road Rash (either version).

Ridge Racer for the PlayStation

Super Hang-On is a comfort game for me, if I need a pick up and play racer I often choose that
If I wanna get more technical while staying retro I'd play Gran Turismo 2
If I'm in a "I need the arcade experience" mood I'll play Daytona USA

Diddy Kong racing.

Gaelco’s World Rally Championship (1993)

Colin McRae Rally for PSX/PSP still holds up really well.

I guess it depends on the definition of "Retro". I never got into racing games until Jet Moto and Wipeout on the original Playstation.

rc pro am and super off road give me so much nostalgia from my childhood.
I also have mega nostalgia from rad racer :)

San Francisco rush extreme racing 64.

re-volt and quantum redshift

Grand Prix on Atari was pretty fun.

Radical Psycho Machine (RPM) Racing for the SNES!
Fun fact, this was one of the few games that played entirely in the SNES' High Resolution graphics mode!

In nokia n-gage (the og and not the 2nd smaller version) there was a rally game, really good one.... Then I like rally 3.

No clue whether people consider the wii retro yet, but it's a tie between Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity on wii (since that's how I experienced it) or Cartoon Network Racing on PS2 (same reason). I'm fairly certain PS2 is technically retro by now, as insane as that sounds.

Not my favorite, but I really liked Buggy Run from Master System

Rally Cross Beetle Adventure Racing Outrun

It's a close call between Super Hang-On, World Rally and Colin McRae 2.0.

Jet Moto series on PS1

I hate that I can call this “retro” now, but 100% INITIAL D arcade machine or PSP game.
SPEEDY SPEED BOY
GASOLINE’S BURNIN’ IN

Top Gear 3000. It's the main reason why I have a SNES emulator installed on every device I own lol.

Ridge Racer 4 on PlayStation. Such great mechanics. It’s genuine fun.

A game that no one I know IRL knows exists without me telling them:
Eliminator Boat Duel on NES.
Basically Super off-road meets Cobra Triangle.