Here is my selection of what I think are 5 of the very best driving and racing games for the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) with a bit of information on each one to give you a flavour of what it is like. I've tried to cover a reasonable ranbge of different game types, such as realistic track racing, off-road and fantasy style, so hopefully there will be something here for you in this list no matter what your tastes are. Of course this can't be a definitive list, only my personal recommendations, so if you think that you know a game which should have been included then please do use the comments box at the bottom of the page to let people know about it.

If you like your racing games with the maximum level of realism then Need for Speed: Shift is probably the best PSP game for you. Developed with the help of real life racing drivers and featuring true to life race tracks, cars and performance and handling the aim is to give you an experience as close to real life as possible. One of the other nice features is the driver profile system which allows you to choose your driver persona and skill set, which then affects the direction of your career progressions, which extra content you can unlock, and who you get put up against in online match ups.

Midnight club is an illegal street racing game with open city maps for you to race around and try to make your name. In this edition the cities available for your to race in are Atlanta, San Diego, and Detroit. There are pleny of cusomization options for you to make your own ride, along with all of the tune ups and upgrades you can buy to improve your car's performance. The multiplayer feature allows you to take on up to 7 other players.

 For off-road racing, either on motocross bikes or All Terrain Vehicles MX vs ATV has a great variety of tracks, competitions and mini-games, although it does suffer a bit from slow loading times. One of the unique features is that you can race bikes against cars and vice versa, which I think is quite fun. The multiplayer feature allows up to 4 players to go up against each other at a time.

 Another good bike racing game, only this time on the track rather than off-road, is the onda Superbike World Championship. It includes 10 real world tracks to play on, and reealistic bikes to use. Variable weather conditions can give you real problems, but you can turn this function off when you first start so that its not too hard. Unfortunately the multiplayer is only for 3 players max, but there are 13 cpu controlled opponents for each race.

 Wipeout pure stays pretty close to previous wipeout games, only with new courses to take on and up to 8 person multiplayer races through the PSP wi-fi connection. Personally I am quite happy with that as I remember playing wipeout on the original PlayStation 1 and loving it.  Fast and frenetic as ever wipeout is more about quick reactions that close control and you can pick it up pretty quickly without having to spend ages getting used to the handling, which makes it great for playing against friends.