Development of Crash Team Racing began as an original intellectual property featuring block-headed characters. Naughty Dog pitched the title to Sony, who approved the project after Naughty Dog expressed a willingness to convert it into a Crash Bandicoot game.

Naughty Dog started production on Crash Team Racing after finishing Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back; the game engine for Crash Team Racing was built at the same time as the development of Crash Bandicoot: Warped.

Crash Team Racing was one of the first Crash Bandicoot games to include full voice acting for all primary characters.

Naughty Dog had only 8 months of full production time to complete the game.

Every track in Crash Team Racing is constructed on a circular mesh world, which allowed for smoother drifting and more precise corner shaping than in earlier PlayStation games.

Naughty Dog was forced to extensively optimize memory because Crash Team Racing used nearly every kilobyte available on the original PlayStation.

Crash Team Racing was the final Crash game developed by Naughty Dog before the intellectual property changed ownership.

Some staff members provided character voices because Naughty Dog preferred exaggerated, cartoon-style performances instead of hiring actors for minor roles.

During the prototype stage, the team built a replica of the Crescent Island course from Diddy Kong Racing to test whether a racetrack of similar scale and complexity was feasible on the PlayStation.

NASCAR vehicle number 98 received a custom Crash Bandicoot themed paint job to promote the game.

A playable demonstration was included on a promotional compilation disc released by Pizza Hut on November 14, 1999.

A glitch in the PAL version of the game allows the player to exit the language selection screen using the triangle button, which results in no language being selected. This transforms most text into a series of slashes and marks.

This glitch also inexplicably causes the heads of several bosses, except for Ripper Roo, to be swapped.

Ripper Roo was originally intended to speak intelligibly in Crash Team Racing, but the developers decided it better suited his personality to remain incoherent. The unused audio is still present on the game disc.

Cortex originally had slower acceleration, but the developers improved his stats because testers consistently chose Crash instead.

The game’s artificial intelligence cheats by receiving hidden speed boosts on higher difficulties.