What is your favorite retro racing game?

Sonic the Hedgehog for Sega, Super Maro Bro for the NES, along with Zelda, and Hotwheels micro racer. Blaster Master waa also a super fun game that I am on the hunt for. Far as Road Rash loved the PS1 version. Also play the shit out of Cruising the USA for the Nintendo 64.

Rc Pro Am was pretty great.

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

Not sure it's my favourite, but Wipeout XL/2097 deserves a mention.

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!

Ridge Racer for the PlayStation

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.

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!

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

Hydro Thunder on Dreamcast!

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.
- 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.
- 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.

F-Zero X
I crave speed and murder

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.

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

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

Top Gear on SNES is pretty sick.
Cruisin’ USA was pretty great too.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Wacky Wheels and Slipstream 5000.

Diddy Kong racing.

For me it’s Rad Racer on NES. Just very nostalgic! I love the sounds and the graphics just scream 80s/early 90s

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

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

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.

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!

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

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

Grand Prix on Atari was pretty fun.

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

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!