Some say if you aren't first, you're last, but all five of these racers impressed us – be it with their crashes, rockets, or tight driving fundamentals.

Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled

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From Crash Team Racing to Crash Nitro Kart, this series has always offered top-notch kart racing so it comes as no surprise that Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled does a great job bringing the franchise into the modern era while pulling tracks from both games.The campaign’s difficulty and the power slide mechanic make for an addictive gameplay loop and the events give you a reason to keep coming back.For more, check out our Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled review Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled was also our readers' pick for the best puzzle game of 2019, beating out the competition with 44% of the vote in our People's Choice polling.These are our nominees for the best racing game of 2019.

Best Racing Game Nominees 6 IMAGES

Click through the gallery above or scroll down the page for the full list!

Wreckfest

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Need for Speed Heat

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DiRT Rally 2.0

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Grid

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After a generation jam-packed with realistic racers that have made it their mission to teach us to drive clean and race fair, Wreckfest arrived on consoles this year like a cheeky kick in the shins. Forget driving etiquette; this is the automotive equivalent of a bar brawl, and it’s absolutely outstanding. Wreckfest rekindles the door-slamming spirit of Bugbear’s original FlatOut games and brings it back to life inside easily the best demolition derby game in over a decade.There may be an overt focus on wildly exaggerated, metal-rending mayhem here – with its wacky RV races and motorised couches – but there’s also a serious streak to Wreckfest’s handling model and damage. A true successor to the likes of Destruction Derby, the original FlatOut, and the criminally underrated Test Drive: Eve of Destruction, Wreckfest is top shelf racing. Try the Deathloop track (it’s not just a clever name).For more, check out our Wreckfest review While Need for Speed Heat feels a little more like a mosaic of existing concepts rather than something especially trendsetting, Ghost has certainly scraped these ideas from some of the most-loved games in the now 25-year-old series.Combining elements of fan-favourites like Underground and the original Most Wanted with some lessons learned from other open-world racers makes Heat the best NFS game in years, and a mammoth improvement on 2017’s Need for Speed Payback.For more, check out our Need for Speed Heat review Primarily designed for hardboiled rally enthusiasts, Dirt Rally 2.0 is stern, focussed, and harder than a woodpecker’s lips. It’s as tricky to tame as its predecessor, but doing so is as satisfying as ever.There’s been some disappointing nickel-and-diming with previously-seen cars as DLC since its release way back in February, but otherwise Dirt Rally 2.0 boasts the best-looking stages in the series to date and a variety of handling improvements that reassert this spin-off series’ reputation as the premier rally simulator of the modern era.For more, check out our DiRT Rally 2.0 review Codemasters has earned a good deal of acclaim in recent years for its aggressively hard-nosed racing sims like the F1 series and Dirt Rally, but this year’s Grid is an altogether different beast. It’s more streamlined than its 2008 namesake in terms of team management and it’s definitely way too lean on tracks, but Grid packs fun, fast-paced racing into an easy-to-digest format.Straddling the line between arcade thrills and something slightly more demanding, Grid’s hyperbolic brand of high-contact, Hollywood-style circuit and street racing is delivered with style and confidence.For more, check out our Grid review

What was your favorite racing game this year? Let us know in the comments, and be sure to check out all of our other Game of the Year award winners as well as our picks for the best movies, TV shows, comics, and anime of 2019!

Art for IGN’s Best of 2019 is by Julia Rago, Justin Vachon, Angela Nguyen, and Nicole Cagampan.