Grand Prix (1984)

"Grand Prix" is one of the bestselling Polish games in the 80's. Its first version showed up in 1984. Its successor is "Formuła 1" (published in 2007) by the same authors (Jan Rojewski and Michał Stajszczak), which is in fact renewed "Grand Prix" with some corrections and changes to the rules and track design.

Game mechanics of both games mentioned above is quite similar to the "Formula 1" from Waddingtons, which was published in 1962 (see: Formula-1).

In every turn the players set the speed of their cars and try to drive through curves without an accident to reach the finish line before opponents. The speed is converted into number of boards which their cars can pass by - every 30 kmph is one board. Maximum speed is 270 kmph.

When safe speed for the curve is exceeded, the player has to roll the dice specified number of times to check if the car would stay on the track after breaking or if the accident (and some additional damage to the tyres and brakes) would happen.

The players are equipped with some amount of tyres and brakes points (represented by cards), which are used during the game when players brake hard to indicate the tyres and brakes wear.

Both types of damage points could be reset to the amount from the beggining of the game in the pit stop during the race.

During the race players can also use tactical cards. Everyone gets 4 types of cards: "Safe braking" ("Hamowanie"), "Start with speed 180 kmph" ("Start 180 km/h"), "+1 board" ("1 Pole"), "+2 boards" ("2 Pola"). Players who start from 2nd and 3rd line get extra cards ("+1 board" and "+2 boards").

There were three editions of the game. Artwork for the two first editions was done by Tomasz Poniatowicz. In the third edition game box artwork was done by Andrzej Gosik.