Grand Prix Legends

A realistic recreation of the 1967 Formula 1 season for the die-hard racing fan.

Overview

Grand Prix Legends is a racing simulation that reproduces the real-life 1967 Formula 1 season, regarded as one of the most exciting and dangerous F1 seasons ever. The game featured advanced physics for its time and strong multiplayer support, making it a long-standing favorite of the hardcore racing community. On the other hand, the unforgiving realism and difficulty also guaranteed that the game never became a mainstream hit.

Grand Prix Legends features almost all of the drivers, tracks and cars of the real 1967 season including the full 14-mile Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit. The car setups offer a vast amount of adjustable parameters ranging from tire pressures to toe angles and differential ratios; unfortunately, the default setups in the initial release of the game are somewhat unpredictable due to some unrealistic camber angle and ride height settings. The 1967 cars also had no aerodynamics and the engines produced tremendous amounts of torque, adding up to a punishing degree of difficulty. The game does include "trainer cars" that have less powerful engines, though.

Multiplayer community

Grand Prix Legends has gathered a huge lot of sim-racing enthusiasts over the years. Many leagues, including a World Cup, are still alive. Starting from web sites offering custom setups and organizing online leagues, the game has been reverse-engineered to such an extent that there are now dozens of extra tracks, car models, graphical makeovers and even full season mods that change the physics parameters within the game. Of particular importance during the early years were VROC, a lobby system for online races, and GPLRank, a leaderboard for lap records. The GPLLinks page is a good collection of GPL-related resources.

Tracks

Kyalami, South Africa
Mexico City, Mexico
Monaco
Monza, Italy
Mosport, Canada
Nürburgring, Germany (full 14-mile circuit)
Rouen-les-Essarts, France (replaced Le Mans Bugatti; see below)
Silverstone, England
Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium
Watkins Glen, USA
Zandvoort, Netherlands

The French Grand Prix was raced on the Le Mans Bugatti track in 1967. Rouen was chosen instead for the game, probably because the Bugatti track is not as interesting to drive as Rouen and real-life drivers didn't like it either.