Best Xbox Racing Games

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered (Xbox One)

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered is a delightful arcade racer that serves up ferociously fast driving action and spectacular crunchy car crashes. Playing as both illegal street racer and police pursuer, here you can switch at your leisure between hunting down lawless speed freaks and high-speed escapes from supercharged cop cars. With an excellent, and ever-expanding, array of tricks and traps to use as you blow other vehicles off the roads, and delicately remastered graphics that still look ace in 2024, this is blisteringly fast arcade action that just never grows old.

• Xbox Game Pass? Yes

GRIP: Combat Racing (Xbox One)

Remember PS1 cult classic Rollcage? This is the spiritual successor to that game. The idea behind GRIP is that your vehicle can't be tipped over — it works both ways — allowing you to drive on the walls, ceilings, and find your ideal path to the finish line. The game also packs an immense sense of speed, making it overwhelming at first, but stick with it, and you'll get a real kick out of its masterfully designed courses and pumping soundtrack.

• Xbox Game Pass? No

DiRT Rally 2.0 (Xbox One)

The sequel to 2015's critically acclaimed racer quickly established itself as the premiere rally game on Xbox One, improving on the original with a brand-new weather modelling system, upgraded My Team mode, enhanced vehicle handling and over 50 fully-licenced historic and modern-day cars. DiRT Rally 2.0 prides itself on its simulation-heavy gameplay, making this a racer you'll need to spend many hours with in order to truly master its mechanics.

• Xbox Game Pass? Yes

Forza Horizon 4 (Xbox One)

In our opinion, this is possibly the best racing game available on Xbox - Forza Horizon 4. As we previously mentioned, it just pips Forza Horizon 5 for us as the best in the Horizon series, a series that's delivered impeccable open world racing to Xbox players for more than a decade now.

The novel setting of Great Britain, with its varied seasonal weather patterns in tow, makes for a great open world driving setting and one that still entertains us after hundreds of hours of play. Miles and miles of open roads, great racing, wacky side events, hundreds of incredibly high-detailed cars, fantastic driving physics, the list goes on. You just can't go wrong with this one and we absolutely recommend a download - that free Xbox Series X|S upgrade is a lovely touch too!

• Xbox Game Pass: No (Delisted)

Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged (Xbox Series X|S)

You can't really go wrong with either of the Hot Wheels Unleashed games on Xbox but it's the sequel that has the slightly better reviews, so that's probably the best one to recommend in this case! These are some fantastic arcade racers featuring well-designed environments, great racing mechanics, plenty of scope for creativity in the form of customisation and track-building elements, and generally just a whole lot of fun. Try the first one, and then pick up the sequel if you really like it!

• Xbox Game Pass: No

F1 Manager 2024 (Xbox Series X|S)

If you like your racing games with more of a management flavour, then F1 Manager 2024 is the way to go. The latest entry in the series is the best and most polished version yet, and although it doesn't quite have the depth of a Motorsport Manager on PC, it makes up for that with some excellent graphics that immerse you in the world of F1.

This is another game that you can play on Xbox with mouse and keyboard support, but to be honest you can't go wrong whichever control scheme you use. It takes a while to get to grips with, but once F1 Manager 2024 has got its hooks into you, this is a game you could easily end up spending hundreds of hours with.

• Xbox Game Pass: No