The Lancia-Ferrari and Maserati teams were back in action again at Monza with Vanwall rejoining the fray having missed the German GP. There was no sign of BRM. The Lancia-Ferrari team entered Juan-Manuel Fangio, Peter Collins, Luigi Musso, Eugenio Castellotti, the Marquis de Portago and Wolfgang Von Trips (although he crashed heavily when a steering arm broke and so he did not start).

Maserati has the usual gaggle of cars led by factory drivers Stirling Moss and Jean Behra while Vanwall ran local hero Piero Taruffi alongside Maurice Trintignant and Harry Schell. Connaught sent three cars but they were not very competitive with Jack Fairman being the fastest but qualifying only 15th on the grid.

At the start Musso and Castellotti got ahead and spent the early laps dueling frantically, destroying their tires in the process. This meant that both had to stop early for new rubber. Fangio, Moss, Collins and Schell had formed the second slipstreaming group and so this became the battle for the lead. Collins eventually pitted for tires and dropped back. De Portago suffered a tire failure on the banking and was lucky not to have a big accident. He did hit the wall but was able to drive the car to the pits to retire with a damaged suspension. Castellotti also suffered a tire failure and crashed heavily but without hurting himself.

Shortly before half distance Fangio pitted with a broken steering arm. Castellotti was put in the repaired car and Fangio's hopes of winning the World Championship began to fade. Moss was at the front and beginning to pull away from Schell. Behra has retired from third place and so that had fallen to Musso. The Italian moved to second when Schell stopped to refuel but it was expected that when Musso stopped he would hand over the car to Fangio. The pit stop came and went but Musso stayed in the car and when Schell retired he was back in second position.

Collins was in a position to win the World Championship but when he came in for a tire check with 15 laps to go he made the remarkable decision to hand over his car to Fangio, thus giving Fangio the chance to win another World title. It was a great sporting gesture.

The race seemed to have settled down but with five laps to go Moss ran out of fuel. As he was coasting to a stop, his Maserati team mate Luigi Piotti slowed down and used his car to push Moss's 250F to the pits. Moss had lost the lead to Musso, but with three laps to go the Lancia-Ferrari driver suffered a broken steering arm as the car came off the final banking and he came to an unseemly stop opposite the pits. Moss was ahead again and he won the race by six seconds. But with Fangio in second place the World Championship went to the Argentine driver for the third consecutive year.