I always preferred Daytona USA over Ridge Racer, but given the platforms they were tied to, Ridge Racer won out. Same thing with Virtua Fighter (which I preferred) versus Tekken. The former game was a lot more polished than the latter game.
What did impress me about Daytona and Ridge Racer was the sense of speed and smoothness in 3-D graphics. It was like nothing I'd ever seen. Those games were both leaps and bounds over Cruis'n USA, which was Nintendo's/Midway's competitor to Ridge Racer and Daytona (Nintendo's real racing gem, however, was the perfectly competent Wave Race 64). I kind of miss the days when arcades, primarily through Namco, Sega, and Midway, were proving grounds for home video game technology.