I’m not much good with computers. I can use them, but I don’t pretend to understand them. It was therefore with a mixture of surprise and delight that I recently managed to revive a previously dead old laptop.
Before you start thinking that this has become the ‘Classic & Laptop’ website, there is a motoring angle to all this. Kind of.
You see, the computer in question had on it a copy of Grand Prix Legends. This game was released in 1998, and faithfully recreates the 1967 Formula One season – with one exception.
That year, the French GP was held at Le Mans’ terminally dull Bugatti circuit; the game's developers wisely chose to replace this with the majestic Rouen-Les-Essarts.
It’s not your average driving simulation. A friend of mine who works for a computer-game publisher described it as being “harder than diamond shoulder-pads”, and there’s no doubt that you’ll spend most of your time inadvertently chucking your car at the scenery. The rest you’ll spend messing around with its set-up.
But once you do become more proficient, it’s just fabulous. Best of all, a huge community grew off the back of it. People with infinitely more computer know-how than me, and clearly with more time on their hands, have come up with add-ons including the 1.5-litre F1 cars of 1965, and the be-winged 3-litre machines of 1969.
