Ahhh friend, that is such a big question. I’m going to narrow down to just 2 games but I could literally sit here all day, fill out an entire chart of games and still not be done. I love racing games.
I’m going to say the best sim overall is Assetto Corsa, the original, because of it’s insane modding community that can make it into any sort of driving experience that you want.
And for best arcade racing game… I am inclined to say Burnout 3:Takedown from back in the PS2 days. The later sequels were also great, but this is the one that perfected the formula of extremely fast and aggressive driving, with blissful brake to drive and crashing physics. They just don’t make games that drive as good as this one in the arcade subgenre anymore.

Actually, I AM going to post a chart too, because I remembered I already have it saved.

I have a lot of fond memories with Crash Team Racing. Now I want to go back and revisit it!

My favorite was Racing Destruction Set on C64. 2 player split screen, you could modify your car for the track conditions, the tracks had multiple surfaces (road, dirt , ice, etc), and there was an included track editor.

Ridge Racer Type 4. Beautiful controls, amazing soundtrack, just an amazing game

Beetle adventure racing for N64

When my sister and I were kids we would say a number and count cars to that number. Whatever car was our number was the car we’d have as adults. Still waiting for the backhoe but w/e.

I know what you meant but reading the title made me think of this lol.

Mario Kart Wii or BeamNG.drive

Always loved CTR growing up, loved the newer one as well but playing online was terrible and the challenges felt way too hard to try and complete them all. Played Trackmania for a bit after that but have since kinda settled into Dirt 5.

Trackmania! Man, the original was a hoot and i spent way too long in Trackmania; Sunrise. The tracks are still second to none, and the track editor; powerful. It allows you to save as many ghosts as you want and then produce a video. This was mind blowing to a younger me; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UcQmJwTnBg

I enjoy Forza Horizon 4, and also Need For Speed World, which has several revival servers and a new client.

Driver san francisco, then probably burnout paradise.

Racing games are by far my favorite genre, I don’t think I could pick an absolute favorite, so I’m just gonna ramble for a bit.

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 through Carbon are fondly remembered for a reason, they still stand up so well today. Outside of the golden era of NFS, Hot Pursuit (2010), The Run, Most Wanted (2012), Heat, and Unbound (absolute trash update today, nevermind on Unbound) are very good as well. Other games in the series are good too (I’m a strong defender of Rivals despite it being objectively subpar), but I’d consider these to be the highlights.

The Burnout series is excellent, especially Takedown, Revenge, and Paradise.

Forza Motorsport 4 and Forza Horizon 1 are the absolute peak of that franchise, absolutely beautiful games, I love the atmosphere and career pacing.

The PGR series is great as well, and only got better with every title. PGR4 (the last one) is amazing. This team also developed Blur before shutting down, basically Mario Kart with real cars, which is massively underrated.

The Flatout games (1 and 2, we don’t talk about 3 and 4 is eh) are great. Bugbear also developed Wreckfest, which is a spiritual successor that improves on the original in almost every way.

Driver: San Francisco is one of the greatest games ever made, and I’ll never forgive Ubisoft for abandoning the series.

The Motorstorm games are great, and Evolution Studios also worked on the excellent Driveclub before being bought and merged into Codemasters (and later EA…)

Enthusia is another super underrated one, really unique progression system that encourages you to drive interesting cars instead of the fastest.

The DiRT and GRID franchises have some great entries as well, especially DiRT 2/3 and GRID 1/2. Codemasters also developed FUEL, which I think held the title of biggest video game world for a long time (it might still if you don’t count stuff like Flight Simulator).

Split/Second is excellent despite its shitty PC port.

There’s a bunch of great indies as well, Distance, Redout, Inertial Drift, Horizon Chase Turbo.

There are lots more, Midnight Club, Ridge Racer, Gran Turismo, Test Drive, but this comment is way too long as-is… It is also fairly depressing that most of these are dead franchises, and/or aren’t available to purchase anymore due to licensing expiration.

Partially because I don’t see it mentioned, Destruction Derby Arenas

I’m not as into car games as I used to be, but I have very fond memories of live for speed and richard burns rally.

Arcade would be the Forza series, as for Sim I very much enjoy Assetto Corsa due to how moddable it is, and because driving around in VR is rad.