An IndyCar was parked inside the DreamWorks studio during production, to provide artists immediate access to the race cars featured in the film.
The confusion about Chet's gender is a joke/reference about snails being hermaphrodites.
The street race where Turbo gets his powers is inspired by The Fast and the Furious films. The black car is made to look like Toretto's Charger while the other is Brian's green Eclipse. They even have the black car doing the front wheelie to start the race.
Reigning Indy Champion Guy Gagné is fittingly named. "(Avoir) Gagné" is the past participle of "to win" in French.
One of the photos Angelo shows Tito about craziness had Mason and Phil from Madagascar (2005) in it.