ye; it was very much one of Codemasters' ways of making the series stand out more in the PS2 days, especially in the case of the first TOCA Race Driver since that one had a much more elaborate story mode (I still need to play it), later games started downplaying it a bit more (3 barely even has one)

They have brought back the idea on GRID Legends and the recent F1 games, which is neat to see, tho I dunno how charming those are compared to the TOCA Race Driver 1 and 2 ones (I'll forever love 2's cutscenes)