The cars are setup more to take the tight mountain passes and emphasis is placed more on driver ability rather than speed and power. The series at first gained popularity via fansubs and bootlegs, until TOKYOPOP translated both the anime and manga.

The anime and manga Initial D stars Takumi Fujiwara as he is introduced to touge racing after it is found that he has a natural ability to race his father's nearly bone stock Toyota AE86 Sprinter Trueno.

This Japanese racing scene can be seen in the anime series Initial D, which focuses mainly on mountain pass racing and Wangan Midnight which deals with high-speed expressway racing.

Arising from the street culture, import racing venues eventually arose and huge drag racing events at Palmdale, California often packed in over 10,000 spectators per day.

The island of Puerto Rico also has a long history of pioneering import drag racing in the mid 1970s and 1980s, and it is still a huge sport on the island. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, front wheel drive vehicles, mostly Hondas, gained popularity in Southern California.

Students at colleges and universities can also take part in single seater racing through the SAE Formula Student competition, which involves designing and building a single seater car in a multidisciplinary team, and racing it at the competition. This also develops other soft skills such as teamwork whilst promoting motorsport and engineering.

There are other categories of single-seater racing, including kart racing, which employs a small, low-cost machine on small tracks. Many of the current top drivers began their careers in karts.

In North America, the cars used in the National Championship (currently the IndyCar Series, and previously CART) have traditionally been similar though less sophisticated than F1 cars, with more restrictions on technology aimed at controlling costs.

Formula One is widely considered to be the pinnacle of motorsports, with the F1 Drivers' Championship being one of, and the oldest among, only three World Championships awarded each year by the FIA (the others being the World Touring Car Championship and the World Rally Championship).

The best-known variety of single-seater racing, Formula One, involves an annual World Championship for drivers and constructors of around 18 races a year featuring major international car and engine manufacturers, and independent constructors, such as Ferrari, McLaren, Williams, BMW Sauber, Toyota, Honda, Renault, Red Bull Racing - in an ongoing battle of technology and driver skill and talent.