Horizon Chase Turbo
Start at the back of the pack and work your way up to the front over a certain amount of laps. The sense of speed is tremendous thanks to its old-school horizon approach to simulating depth. In other words, it's fast, especially the turns!
It also has the luxury of appearing very difficult but being relatively easy to control. Ask your wife to play it. BTW, steering wheels are not supported, but you can manually configure it if you got the time.
And then there's the fresh and inspiring soundtrack by classic game composer Barry Leitch. Go buy an autographed CD.