The best racing games on PC

The best racing games on PC feature everything from sim racing staples like Assetto Corsa Competizione and iRacing to modern simcade pleasures like Forza Horizon 5 and The Crew Motorfest. The racing genre has a rich history in PC gaming, which means your options for new experiences behind the wheel are near endless. I've included some deeper cuts from further back to reflect this—oh hi, Burnout Paradise and Project CARS 2. To make your search for the next best game slightly easier, I've pulled together all the best racing games you can play right now to save you from wading through the masses.

I've selected various racing games worth playing, including sims like Le Mans Ultimate, or more offbeat, underrated choices like What The Car. Generally, I play it pretty loose with the definition of 'racing game' to ensure this list has games that appeal to all players—anything with wheels counts. But, even with these blurred guidelines, they all have one thing in common: they all offer a fantastic driving experience in one way or another.

If you're looking to take your driving simulation experience to the next level it's worth checking out our guide to the best steering wheels for PC.

Newest racing games

Some of our favorite racing games on this list aren't necessarily the newest. In a genre where things get newer and shinier each year though, here are our quick tips on the newest releases on this list so you can figure out which series are worth upgrading this year.

• Wreckfest 2 (March 20, 2025)
• Tokyo Xtreme Racer (January 23, 2025)
• F1 24 (May 31, 2024)
• MotoGP 24 (May 2, 2024)

Best racing games

Assetto Corsa Competizione

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Release date: 2019 | Developer: Kunos Simulazioni | Steam

Kunos has a flashy new driving sim currently in Early Access, but right now there’s not quite enough content in Assetto Corsa Evo for me to recommend migrating from old sim racing stalwart ACC.

It’s still just about the perfect balance of authenticity and driveability. It doesn’t feel impenetrable when you first play it, thanks to pretty robust driver academy and solo career modes intended as a friendly onramp, but six years after it was released you’re probably still chasing those top 1% lap times in your league of choice. The skill ceiling’s just that high.

Indeed, it’s the endorsement of those ultra-elite sim racers, the unbeatable aliens, which speaks the loudest about ACC’s vehicle handling, its tire and brake temp modelling, and its masterfully well-scanned roster of tracks (many of which are DLC purchases though, be forewarned).

Its server interface is not especially user-friendly, but its enduring popularity means there’s a thriving cottage industry in third-party online racing infrastructure provided by the likes of LFM. And while it seems neither the third parties nor Kunos itself can do much about the cheaters, this remains the king of sim racing for the foreseeable. Or at least until Evo drops its proposed Gran Turismo-style career mode.

Read more: Assetto Corsa Competizione is a rigorous, authentic racing sim, but only the hardcore need it right now

Project CARS 2

Release date: 2017 | Developer: Slightly Mad Studios | Steam

Since its release in 2017, other games have surpassed Slightly Mad Studios’ racing sim for visual glossiness. Newer titles have found a more convincing handling model, and offer a wider range of vehicles and cars. But where none of these whippersnappers can beat PC2 is in sheer sandbox appeal.

It sounds like a minor detail, but the level of detail its race creator goes into is peerless. How fast do you want the day-night cycle to operate? X60 speed? Roger that. What about weather slots, from sunny to all-out blizzard? How about tire wear, fuel burn, damage level and mechanical failures? Mandatory pit-stops?

It’s that granular server control, as much as its excellent handling and vast swathe of vehicles and tracks, which holds the attention of a persistent community in PC2, long after dev support ended. In fact you can no longer even buy it new on Steam. If you don't own it already, it's worth finding a way to play.

Read more: Project CARS 2 review

Le Mans Ultimate

Release date: 2024 (early access) | Developer: Studio 397 | Steam

Studio 397 continues to polish its fundamentally thrilling depiction of endurance racing, rolling out regular substantial updates as well as DLC cars and tracks of both the paid and free variety. It’s still in early access and thus shouldn’t be considered final, but if you drove a few laps of the very earliest release and haven’t touched it since, this is your prompt to reinstall and enjoy all the improvements. Recent highlights include reworked tire temp behaviour for both player and AI vehicles, better UI and cameras, asynchronous co-op mode so you and a friend can take on mammoth endurance races whenever you can fit a shift into your schedule

The official license imbues it with a tracklist far broader than the iconic Circuit de Sarthe, but the clue’s in the title: the big draw here is in how well this game captures the magic of the Le Mans 24-hour. All the LMP and GTE machinery is present and correct in its 2023 season livery, the day-night transitions are pretty magical, and the level of race management feels like just the stern demand you’d want from such a famously gruelling endurance event. And yes, you can actually set the race length to 24 hours and take it on in real time if you hate yourself.

iRacing

Release date: 2008 | Developer: iRacing Motorsport Simulations | iRacing

With its regular online racing leagues and meticulous car and track modelling, iRacing is as close to real racing as you can get on the PC.

That also means iRacing is something you need to work up to. It has no meaningful single-player component and, with its subscription fees and live tournament scheduling, it requires significant investment. Oh, and a force feedback wheel is quite literally required here. Not because the gamepad support is poor; it just won't let you race unless you have a wheel.

But for a certain class of sim racing fan, there is nothing that compares. The very best iRacing players often compete in real motorsport too, and make a career out of eSports sim racing. And having first released now over a decade ago in 2008, it's consistently stayed astride with the latest simulators each year. Quite an achievement.

Read more: iRacing review

The Crew Motorfest 

Release date: 2023 | Developer: Ivory Tower | Epic

The Crew Motorfest brings better vehicle handling and more detailed graphics than previous The Crew games, which helps to put it above the rest. Although we argued in our review that there is a decent amount of Forza Horizon mimicry throughout the game, that doesn't stop it from offering a lively racing experience that's worth picking up. Sure, its overly-enthusiastic voice cast may seem a bit intense when you start, but before long you'll be using their encouragement to perform at your very best.

As we stated in our review, the game is at its best when it "dares to do something that Horizon doesn't" through its use of playlists that transform the landscape in response to the theme of your current challenge. These offer a variety of beautiful environments to help keep your time on the track exciting, while also putting your driving to the test since you don't know what may lurk around each twist and turn.

Read more: The Crew Motorsport review

Forza Horizon 5

Release date: 2021 | Developer: Playground Games | Steam, Microsoft Store

With Phil's review of Forza Horizon 5, he zooms in on the level of refinement that's taken place in the Forza series. No sweeping changes have been made in the newest entry in the series, but a meticulous level of craftsmanship is on display. The Playground team has spent countless hours polishing the hoods of 500 cars until they gleam, and the same is true of the environments in the new setting: Mexico.

The seasonal playlist is present and prominent from the beginning, forming the heart of the gameplay. You'll find yourself taking on unexpected challenges, and utilizing your entire stable of cars in pursuit of new rare additions, as Phil put it: "We've had plenty of looter shooters, but Forza Horizon is slowly turning into the first looter racer."

Read more: Forza Horizon 5 looks like a truly 'next-gen' game

Tokyo Xtreme Racer

Release date: 2025 (early access) | Developer: Genki Co.,Ltd. | Steam

There’s a real niche forming for 2000s NFS revival in the current racing games landscape, and with its roster of Skylines and RX-7s, brilliantly disgusting vinyls and simple, lightning quick arcade races, Tokyo Xtreme Racer nails both the aesthetic and the driving feel of that series’ high point. Shame it doesn’t bring back the crunk soundtracks too, but you can’t have everything.

The concept’s refreshingly simple: you and another racer, in an equally ridiculous car, racing Japanese highways at night. These sprint battles are won and lost on points, "a numeric value that quantifies the willpower of drivers… Not only is your speed tested, master the mind games and break your opponent's resolve," says TXR’s Steam page. If that isn’t the most Japanese racing game sentence you’ve ever read, I'd be amazed.

Like many of the most exciting racers around at the moment, this one’s still in early access. The good news is Genki Co doesn’t plan on staying that way for long—the initial ETA was four months of EA, and with the first build releasing in January 2025, the 1.0 release should be soon now.

Wreckfest 2

Release date: 2025 (early access) | Developer: Bugbear | Steam

We need games like Wreckfest 2. We need them to remind us that the driving genre isn’t just about hitting apexes and finding a couple of extra hundredths on our leaderboard times. It’s also supposed to be fun, and Bugbear’s revamped and ridiculously satisfying damage model is a great platform for having fun.

In any other game you’d be livid if someone T-boned you so badly you lost a wheel, but here you shrug it off and try to limp home anyway, knowing that numerous opponents will probably get even more wrecked than you before the finish line. Because that finish line comes after numerous more dangerous intersections where the pack figure-eights on itself, and where impressively mangled hatchbacks sit motionless.

Guess what? This one’s in early access too. Bugbear’s added the first few cars and a decent array of tracks, and says the community gets to decide where this one goes next. Even before whatever happens next, we’ve got a great roster of track layouts for PvP and solo racing, impressive visuals and a damage model that’s even more detailed than the original Wreckfest’s.

Read more: There's barely more than a demo in Wreckfest 2's early access debut, but I can't stop playing it

BeamNG.drive

Release date: 2015 | Developer: BeamNG | Steam

Let’s be honest with ourselves: in the virtual realm where whiplash and insurance premiums aren’t a thing, crashes are one of the racing genre’s great treats. The twisted metal, the sound, the incredibly satisfying pinwheeling after an impact—it’s what games are here for. Unfortunately due to the vagaries of licence agreements with automotive manufacturers, most games can’t go all-out on their damage models. BeamNG.drive isn’t most games.

Less of a traditional racing game and more of a vehicular sandbox, it’s the perfect venue to host experiments like ‘Which car can make it down this insane slalom of obstacles I’ve built in one piece?’ and ‘How well does a family hatchback navigate a speedbump at 100mph?’

There’s a more traditional flavour of PvP racing on offer too, and thanks to a talented modding community’s multi-decade efforts, you can make BeamNG.drive look like a serious sim racer or a Saturday morning kids’ TV show at your behest.

Need For Speed Unbound

Release date: 2022 | Developer: Criterion Games | Steam

For the longest time it was the be-all and end-all of arcade racing. Then came Need For Speed’s wilderness years, before a return to form in 2018’s Heat, and live service success via 2022’s Unbound.

Not every swing at modern tuner culture lands a killer blow—I'm still undecided about the plumes of graffiti that billow out from your rear wheel arches—but the vehicle list is brilliantly customisable, with more widebody kits than suburban parking lot at 11pm and a great risk-reward system around police chases that incentivises you to go out and raise your wanted level as much as you can without being caught for bigger payouts.

Post-launch support has been strong since 2022, with plenty of cars and even a new Hot Pursuit mode having been added, which puts a fresh spin on the classic car chase that the series was built on.

Read more: Need For Speed Unbound review

MotoGP 24

Release date: 2024 | Developer: Milestone | Steam

Reckon you’re hard, do you? Got a squeaky clean safety rating in ACC and made it to the end credits of multiple FromSoft games? That’s nothing. Try completing a lap—try completing a single corner—of MotoGP 24 with all the assists off.

Milestone’s officially licensed bike sim is next-level challenging. Individual front and rear brakes, both of which need to be modulated ever-so gently as though you’re holding an egg with each trigger finger. Super-detailed tire and bike behaviour simulation. And aero-laden, 227 mph monsters that want to flip you to the moon if you dare to get on the throttle a fraction early.

The feeling when you start to master that unique handling, though, is why MotoGP 24 sits proudly on this list. Sure, you can use the AI-informed assists to onboard you, but the best experience is feeling the full force of a MotoGP bike and learning to tame it. After a few laps, you’ll be begging for a nice relaxing online ACC race in the rain with worn tires and cold brakes.

F1 24

Release date: 2024 | Developer: Codemasters | Steam

Codemasters’ long-running F1 series has its foibles, but nobody’s built a better career mode in this space than the RPG-like life-stealer that lives at F1 24’s core. Now offering the choice to play as a real driver from the F1 or F2 grids or legends of yore as well as the usual create-a-driver, driver career is bolstered by a rivalry system and long-term goals that see you trying to secure your place in the pantheon next to Schumacher, Hamilton et al.

F1 World, introduced one game previously, still doesn’t feel vital to the overall package, but that’s only because the career’s so engrossing, and online racing is so competitive. It’s also testament to the handling model, somewhere in the sim-cade sweet spot, that some of the most fun you can have with these many-finned monstrosities is simply hot lapping and shooting for a higher leaderboard time.

Read more: F1 24 review

Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged

Release date: 2023 | Developer: Milestone | Steam

What happened to games like this? There used to be colourful arcade racers everywhere you looked in PC gaming. On every demo disc that came your way, under the sofa, in your school bag… and then apparently the games industry held a secret meeting to ban them, until Milestone bravely stepped up and put loop-de-loops and speed boosts back on the menu.

The 2021 original was uncomplicated fun, but it had a few gaps that the 2023 sequel capably fills. A surprisingly longform career mode is the main draw on paper, but in reality it’s the collection of impossibly cute Hot Wheels vehicles that proves the lasting motivation to keep coming back to its Micro Machines-like courses and refining your powerslide technique.

EA Sports WRC

Release date: 2023 | Developer: Codemasters | Steam

Don’t worry, Dirt Rally 2 fans, you can swap Codemasters’ older loose surface racer in for the licensed WRC game if you’re still having too much fun in it to make the jump. Truth be told, the appeal’s the same across both games: fantastic feel, formidable challenge, and a pupil-dilating sense of speed.

This being the official game of the 2023 WRC, though, you’ve got the full roster of rally cars across all categories to complement rally stages from every country the championship visits. And it’s here, on the courses, that the jump over to Unreal Engine really proves its worth. Too often in rally games, you feel like you’re navigating along a corridor of trees in the name of frame rate-saving draw distances, but EA WRC really opens things up, sending you along mountaintop trails, undulating riverbed crossings and spectacularly pretty alpine switchbacks.

Post-launch support has been fantastic, with new events and scenarios added every week.

Forza Motorsport 

Release date: 2023 | Developer: Turn 10 Studios | Steam

Forza Motorsport is a step up for Turn 10's storied series. Even if the series isn't as absurdly varied and full of personality as the Horizon spin-offs, Motorsport is one of the best pure racing games around. Vehicles here have a newfound weight which feeds into a more detailed experience since you'll have to consider things such as traction and wear on your tires depending on where you are. Everything just feels more precise than it did in Forza Motorsport 7.

As we stated in our review of Forza Motorsport, the handling is absolutely wonderful, which is where this game excels. Driving feels fast and fluid both on and offline, and you feel immersed in the landscapes you're speeding through, which marks a fantastic racing game. Races feel tense and exhilarating, and you feel in complete control of your vehicle at all points which helps drive you (no pun intended) to beat your own records.

Read more: Forza Motorsport review

TrackMania 2

Release date: 2020 | Developer: Ubisoft Nadeo | Steam, Ubisoft Store

Almost a decade after the release of Trackmania 2, Ubisoft Nadeo debuted its semi-reboot of series with Trackmania 2020. The new game features some significant graphical upgrades, but the real treat is the addition of daily featured tracks, new track pieces like ice, and improved checkpointing. Most importantly, it's a fresh start for Trackmania detached from Nadeo's strange Maniaplanet platform.

But don't worry, Trackmania is still incredibly weird. I've already played tons of nonsensical tracks that require pinpoint timing, endless repetition, and a little bit of luck. Nadeo is also taking a more hands-on approach to post-release content by releasing new tracks made by the studio on a seasonal basis. If you're a lapsed fan or new to the series, this is where you want to be.

Read more: Players demolish Trackmania's 'impossible' skip and fly over the finish line in reverse

My Summer Car

Release date: 2016 | Developer: Amistech Games | Steam

At least half your time in My Summer Car is spent outside of a car. In fact, it’s as much a car mechanic game and a simulator of being a teenage layabout in 1990s rural Finland as a racing game per se. It makes its way on this list, however, because for anyone with a passing interest in cars it’s an essential experience.

It all begins with a note from your parents telling you to rebuild the junked car in your garage. From there you construct a driveable, moddable vehicle down to the most minute nuts and bolts, teaching you exactly what an exhaust manifold looks like and what happens when it rattles loose along a lakeside single lane road at 70mph. Car ownership has never felt more satisfying and personal in driving games than in this slightly janky but beautifully esoteric builder-meets-racer.

What The Car?

Release date: 2024 | Developer: Triband | Steam

A car game with an utter, giddy disregard for cars. The very first thing that happens in Triband’s irreverent take on racing is that your car sprouts legs, and that’s a very important clue that this isn’t going to be troubling iRacing in the realism stakes.

Over the coming hours, you’re going to be guiding a ‘car’ on giant legs through woodland chicanes, deploying a jetpack to launch it between islands, and rolling it around in car-ball form to score a goal, whereupon a pack of bears celebrates like somehow you’ve all just won the World Cup together. A mix of racing, platformer and improv comedy, and the perfect counterpart to a hard evening in the bucket seat trying to find an extra hundredth on your lap time in ACC.

Burnout Paradise Remastered

Release date: 2018 | Developer: Criterion Games | Steam

Racing games aren't often treated to remasters. The big franchises iterate so often that there rarely seems much point, but in the case of Burnout Paradise everybody was happy to see an exception to the rule. In 10 years, there's been nothing quite like it.

And yet the original model still surpasses its imitators. It's so much purer and more exciting than the games it inspired. It doesn't have any licensed cars, so instead it features car-archetypes that crumple into gut-wrenchingly violent wrecks. Compare those to the fender-benders that wipe you out in Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Criterion's attempt at topping themselves and where you get the sense that just depicting a shattered headlight would have entailed hundreds of meetings with Lamborghini's lawyers.

Paradise isn't an online "social" experience. It's not all about collectibles and unlocks. You get new cars, but they're not the point of the game. It's about driving around a city populated entirely by cars, listening to a drivetime DJ spin classic and pop rock tracks while you drive hell-for-leather through twisting city streets, mountain passes, and idyllic farmland. It's violent, blindingly fast, and endlessly entertaining. It's created the modern arcade racing genre, but the joke is on us, because all we've done ever since is try to get back to Paradise.

Read more: Why I love the freedom of Burnout Paradise

Rennsport

Release date: 2024 (early access) | Developer: Teyon, Competition Company | Steam

Rennsport had a tough introduction to the sim racing fold. It went big on positioning itself as an esports platform, a place where vehicles were purchased and traded with real money in a similar fashion to NFTs, and its free-to-play model felt like it was asking for a lot of financial investment in an early product as a result. Happily, the way this sim is being positioned seems to have changed at Competition Company and the focus is back on the quality of simulation, rather than the crypto bro factor.

The studio’s announced an upcoming change to its monetisation model which it says will make more sense to players. The precise details remain TBC—it may be worth waiting to see how exactly these changes will impact the game. What's more concrete is that the driving feels great, the track scans are impressive, and the online racing experience is robust.