I have a knack for driving sims. In every game that has cars in it the driving is always the most fun. Getting the grip of each car and learning how to wing it around. So far the only game I have any tolerance for is Gran Turismo 3. Not many games take it as seriously as "Make stuff go boom boom". So I ask, what is a good sim nowadays and is there a version for linux? I tend to learn how to drift the cars in GT3 so something with a rather complex physics engine is what I am looking for.
For Linux, no idea, try searching the Steam Library for driving games (http://store.steampowered.com/search/tags=699&os=linux&page=1) and maybe you'll find something at least vaguely alike to a racing sim a la "Gran Turismo'' (the only one with ''modern'' graphics that I found that's even remotely similar to what you described is Dirt Rally (http://store.steampowered.com/app/310560/?snr=1_7_7_230_150_2)), since if we're gonna talk about Linux & racing sims... really hope somebody proves me wrong, but the odds of finding a game with such characteristics for Linux are... minuscule. You could always use wine or emulate (if you don't care much about performance/older games) or try to KVM GPU passthrough to achieve native performance but both options are time consuming and the latter one costly.
You can always try modding Euro Track Simulator 2 (my favorite driving sim which has an amazingly good linux port) into a racing sim :D
The graphics are not the greatest, but it is opensource (GPL) and uses openscenegraph under the hood. It is also natively developed under Linux so it would probably be fairly trivial to get loaded up and running.
The closest i know of is DiRT Rally and GRID. Have not played any of those so can't say how good they are though. It's sad how few decent racing games there is for linux..
Grid is alright I guess. Dirt is far from a driving sim. Getting anywhere near GT3 isnt happening on PC. There's Forza 6 apex but you have to give into the microshaft to play it and its not really a sim anymore.
I hate that I'm sounding negative here but its frustrating for me as well as I used to play the shit out of the Gran Turismo series and even bought an original xbox just to replay the first forza.
As far as sims go it is pretty gud. If you dont mind paying out the ass for the game and then also buying the cars as DLC. Atleast DCS World is free but has the common courtesy to give you a reach around while its fucking you.
Which is totally fine, but at least make the platform free. They would probably make more money if they went f2p then you buy the cars you want. Rotate some cars for free every week just to try.