Sprint 8 was the last, and largest, in a series of racing games from Atari and Kee Games, a wholly owned subsidiary of Atari. The series started with Sprint 2, a two player overhead-view arcade racer released in 1976 by Kee Games.
Sprint 2 evolved from the two player racing game Gran Trak 20, but included a microprocessor (the 6502), a first for racing games. This allowed the Sprint games to include computer-controlled cars, better graphics, and more tracks. Unlike Gran Trak, Sprint did not have brake pedals, but the players could still make their cars "fishtail" by turning their steering wheels abruptly.
Other arcade games bearing the Sprint name include:
Sprint 4 and Sprint 8, a 4 player and 8 player version respectively, were released in 1977. Both were full color raster versions of the game.
Sprint One was released in 1978. The "One" in the title reflects the number of players rather than indicating it was a prequel.
The Sprint franchise regained life in 1986 with Atari's release of Championship Sprint and Super Sprint, two and three player racing games with color graphics. These also inspired a sci-fi racing/car combat game, Badlands.
Source: Wikipedia, "Sprint 2", available under the CC-BY-SA License.