FUEL-like offroad racing sim?

[carmatic]

so I've just started playing FUEL, the 2009 open world offroad arcade-style racer where the main selling point is how big its world is.... if you watch youtube videos of it, it looks good enough 

but if you actually play it for any length of time, you will find that the scenery is repetitive (abit like how 16-bit games used to use the same sprites again and again), the procedurally-generated terrain is also repetitive and this makes the actual races kind of boring after awhile, and it makes the 'world exploration' mode unbearably monotonous.... and when you do race, the AI cheats like they operate under different physics than you do

 

I do like the variety of vehicles, tho

 

So my question to you guys is if there is a similar offroad racing game where there is an emphasis on realism rather than arcade gameplay? ideally I am looking for a game where the driving simulation is like Crysis or Half Life 2 , but with the vehicle selection of FUEL 

[trag3dy]

The Dirt series might be what you're after. They're not open world though.