Is illegal/street racing in Codemasters games "off-brand", or simply not tried before?

[Yaggings 51]

This question came up to me when thinking about certain other series that famously featured street racing, and how it generally went to ****. While I don't think Codies are faultless, I definitely would trust them more with a fun driving experience. However, looking at their titles, all of their series (including the more casual ones) feature "legal" racing only. Obviously Codies have a brand to maintain, so I'm wondering - is this a conscious choice, or were they just never interested in making a street racing game?

[Kuba 0]

Well, they were making racing games since 1998 (beginning with Colin McRae Rally) and from that point there were no street racing games whatsoever, the only game beyond racing genre was Sensible Soccer 2006 (which I had for PS2)

[Kuba 0]

I think they have accomodated with FIA-associated games and they don't want to fail because of a street racing game