Metacritic reviews

Whenever the cars are running, Grand Prix is one of the best studio efforts of the '60s. The film only stalls when it's off the track, which is where more than half of this three-hour epic takes place.

Grand Prix is not just a wonderful 'race movie'; it's a brilliant cinematic achievement, period.

Grand Prix is possibly the greatest motor racing film of all time.

The roar and whine of engines sending men and machines hurtling over the 10 top road and track courses of Europe, the US and Mexico – the Grand Prix circuits – are the prime motivating forces of this actioncrammed adventure that director John Frankenheimer and producer Edward Lewis have interlarded with personal drama that is sometimes introspectively revealing, occasionally mundane, but generally a most serviceable framework.

The drama sputters through a 70-minute second half. [14 July 2006, p.4E]

It's razzle-dazzle of a random sort, but it works.The big trouble with this picture is that the characters and their romantic problems are stereotypes and clichés.

Probably the best of the formula motor racing films, though that isn't saying much. Too long, and the bits in-between are the usual soapy off-track drama.

Frankenheimer pulls out all the stops to lend excitement to the racing footage--splitting the screen into ever smaller increments, mounting cameras to the cars to get shots taken inches above the track, and using slow motion--but ultimately his obsession with technique becomes wearying, and the plot is simply not interesting enough to stand on its own.