People who find it silly to even mention CTR in the same sentence as MK64 have clearly not play the former game.
I for one hardly ever played MK64, but the original MK is a game I've invested a lot of time in many years ago. I was also quite surprised to find the same level of fun in a non-MK game, namely CTR.
There's no better game, they're both great games. I find it sad though that Vivendi got a hold of the Crash franchise and ruined it.
Jak X was also a great kart game by the way, although it didn't get a lot of attention.