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Zooming around the world's most famous race tracks with some of the top drivers of Formula One is a daydream of many people. Now you can go one step further by taking a spin in Championship Run.

You start at the back of the pack and have to improve your position to progress in the Driver's Championship. The bends, hills, pits and hairpins of the top tracks have all been reproduced for you to get to grips with.

Your Formula One car is equipped with three gears and a display at the top of the screen provides all the information you could desire: your position, lap times, distance remaining to travel and qualifying rank.

I wouldn't describe the graphics in Championship Run as 'stunning', as the inlay does. I think 'can be a bit messy' is a much better way to put it. I must admit that the tracks and cars shoot by at a hell of a speed but there's minimal detail. Objects at the side of the road are expanded out of recognition as you approach them and going over hills is deadly; you have no idea what's coming up ahead.

What I always find extremely annoying about almost every race game on the Spectrum is that your opponents can drive 'through ' you from behind. They race on as if nothing had happened and you're left picking up the pieces (sob!).

Championship Run doesn't offer anything new to the world of Speccy racing: no exciting features and the same tracks to race around as countless other driving games. Entertaining enough but it doesn't have the guts to make pole position.

NICK ... 56%

'Championship Run is much like Continental Circus. The cars look the same, the track looks the same and your car even catches fire if you're hit too often. Only it's not quite as good as Circus. The car sprites are reasonably well drawn, but the tracks and background 'details' are simplistic. There are two things that annoy me immensely about this game. First is the difficulty in changing gears: many times after a smash up I found it very hard to change down from third to first. Secondly, the computer controlled cars are real pain to pass - you become more and more frustrated by them. As racing games go this is a bit of a non-starter, which is a shame because Impulze's last release, Edd The Duck, was so good.'