Could you find a better racing game for the PS2? I doubt it.
Before this game, I occasionally enjoyed racing games. Now I play this game all the time. It has an arcade style of racing mixed with real world vehicles and parts that keeps the action interesting all the time.
The game's difficulty is challenging, but money races that let you race just for money, are toned down a bit, which is good, because the tournament races can be very challenging and even maddening at times. For those, you basically just have to keep racing until the computer AI racers screw up their race, and you manage to capitalize on their mistakes. Sometimes on the harder races, this can take 20-30 tries of just racing, without any real changes to strategy (though some random route races DO require you to find the best route). This can lead to a bit of anger sometimes though, since you don't get the real sweet stuff in the game until you beat a number of races. Luckily the payoff is worth it.
The graphics and controls are great, the music soundtrack is also great. The sound effects are good for the most part, but sometimes sound cheesy. The game is so good that it hardly ever bothers me. One nice touch is that your vehicles sound different after upgrading with performance motor parts.
That's about it. If you find this game in good condition, I highly recommend that you buy it!