I don't have any pointers specifically for racing games, but there is quite a lot of general research on the subject, the scientific term being the "Tetris effect".
The Tetris effect occurs when people devote sufficient time and attention to an activity that it begins to overshadow their thoughts, mental images, and dreams. It is named after the video game Tetris [but] can occur with other video games with any prolonged visual task (such as classifying cells on microscope slides, weeding, picking or sorting fruit, flipping burgers, driving long distances, or playing board games such as chess or go), and in other sensory modalities.
I have suffered from this effect a lot after playing Burnout for a few days in a row, as well as after playing too much with the Rubik Cube.
Here's a recent quote from BBC Future:
The writer Jeffrey Goldsmith was so obsessed with Tetris that he wrote a famous article asking if the game’s creator Alexey Pajitnov had invented “a pharmatronic?” – a video game with the potency of an addictive drug. Some people say that after playing the game for hours they see falling blocks in their dreams or buildings move together in the street – a phenomenon known as the Tetris Effect. Such is its mental pull, there’s even been the suggestion that the game might be able to prevent flashbacks in people with [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder].
That last link is to Psychology Today that offers further reading.