From Xfire: “By our definition, a racing game is any title that puts you in the driver’s seat of a vehicle as you compete with other racers to see who gets to the finish line first.
So, this means that the game doesn’t necessarily have to have hyper-realistic graphics. It doesn’t even have to be realistic at all. It just has to have a vehicle and a race. That’s it. But, even with such broad criteria, you’d be surprised that there aren’t as many good racing games out there as you’d like to think, especially if you remove Gran Turismo from the equation.”
Source: N4G PC The Best Racing Games Not Named Gran Turismo