Grand Prixnote was a series of licensed Formula One Racing Simulation Games developed by MicroProse.
The brainchild of former engineer Geoff Crammond, whose name was listed on the box for all four entries, the Grand Prix games were frequently held up as being among the most advanced F1 games of their time - the original was the first F1 game to incorporate full 3D graphics and setup tuning, while the second was the first to incorporate mechanical failures.
This was partly due to Crammond's brilliance, partly due to the games being PC-only (and typically with high system requirements), and partly due to the series' sporadic release schedule: while most licensed sports titles are released annually, during the season they're based on, the Grand Prix titles were released less frequently and (with the exception of the first) after the seasons they were based on had ended, allowing for longer development times.
The games in the series are:
- Formula One Grand Prix (1991)
- Grand Prix 2 (1996 - based on the 1994 season)
- Grand Prix 3 (2000 - based on the 1998 season)
- Grand Prix 3 2000 (2001 - an Expansion Pack for 3 based on the 2000 season)
- Grand Prix 4 (2002 - based on the 2001 season)
MicroProse's UK office was shut down by parent company Infogrames in 2002, bringing an end to the franchise and causing an Xbox port of Grand Prix 4 to be cancelled. In December 2025, however, a revived MicroProse announced that they were partnering with Crammond to being unlicensed versions of all four games to Steam in 2026. In the interim, all four games (especially 4) had been kept alive via countless fan-made updates and mods.
Not to be confused with Grand Prix Circuit or Grand Prix Legends, other F1 games with similar names.
The series provides examples of:
- all lowercase letters: 4 used this as an aesthetic choice, with the drivers, teams, and track names all rendered in lower case.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The original was one of the first racing games (if not the first) to offer "assist" features that could be turned on to give the player an easier time, ranging from showing you the racing line and the best gear to be in for each corner, to traction control, ABS, and steering assistance. The game will even brake for you if you want it to.
- 2 introduced mechanical failures, but also allowed you to switch them off if you didn't want your ability to finish the race to be dependent on the Random Number God. 3 and 4 followed suit.
- Expansion Pack: Grand Prix 3 2000 was an updated version of 3 that replaced the cars, drivers, and circuits with the ones from the 2000 season, and added an "instant replay" feature that let you rewind and watch moments again from any angle.
- Expy:
- Jacques Villeneuve didn't give permission for his likeness to be used in 3, so the game replaced him with a generic driver named John Newhouse ("Newhouse" being the English translation of "Villeneuve"). The game lets you rename him back to being Villeneuve, and modding tools let you switch out his in-game portrait to match.
- All four Geoff Crammond Racing re-releases will change the names of the teams, drivers, and a few of the sponsors, since MicroProse no longer have the licenses to use the real ones. Again, though, all four will have Steam Workshop mod support to let you put the real names back in.
- In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It:
- Downplayed with the first two games, which had Geoff Crammond's name on the cover but not as part of the title.
- 3 was labelled as "Grand Prix 3 by Geoff Crammond" on the box, while 4 was labelled as "Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix 4".
- The upcoming re-releases of all four games crank this up a notch by renaming them Geoff Crammond Racing.
- Marathon Level: Any race becomes this if you run it to full distance. Depending on the circuit and (from 3 onwards) the weather, some races can take over two hours. And that's without factoring in practice, qualifying, or the pre-race warm-up.
- No Fair Cheating: Taking certain shortcuts (driving straight across chicanes, for example) will cause the player to be instantly disqualified.
- Sprite/Polygon Mix: All four games used billboarded sprites for trees and the player's steering wheel, and non-billboarded sprites for spectators and railings. The first three games used 2D graphics even more extensively, for things like the cockpit, pit crew, and the drivers' arms.
- Tech-Demo Game: The games had notoriously high system requirements, especially if you wanted to play on the highest graphics settings, and were prone to severe slowdown if those requirements weren't met.
- Victory by Endurance: In 3 in particular, mechanical breakdowns are common enough that it's not unheard of for a race to end with ten or fewer drivers (out of a starting grid of 22), and for drivers to get better results than their cars should allow them to (though not necessarily wins) simply by not breaking down.
- Writing Around Trademarks: The Geoff Crammond Racing re-releases no longer have the rights to use real team or driver names, or to make any references to Formula One whatsoever. Pre-release screenshots illustrate that these are the only changes, however, so the "Apex Orion" in 2, for instance, is still very obviously Williams.
