Graham Hill had a healthy advantage in the World Championship as the F1 regulars gathered at Monza for the last World Championship race of the European season. The BRM driver had 28 points to Jim Clark's 21 and John Surtees's 19. The organizers had given up with the idea of using the banked circuit and so ran the event on the 3.5-mile road track.
In qualifying it was no surprise to see Clark and Hill battling for pole position, the fight being won by Clark by three-tenths of a second. The 2 x 2 grid featured Ritchie Ginther's BRM sharing row two with Bruce McLaren's Cooper and the third row shared by the two British Racing Partnership Lotuses of Innes Ireland and Masten Gregory (Ireland's Climax-engined car faster on this occasion than Gregory's BRM-powered version). The fourth row saw Dan Gurney's Porsche and Surtees's Lola while the first Ferrari was Willy Mairesse (back in action after his crash at Spa in June) in 10th place. Jack Brabham did not appear with his new BT3 but there was another new F1 car, Alessandro de Tomaso entering a flat-eight engined car for Argentine driver Estefano Nasif.
At the start Clark beat G Hill away from the line but the BRM's power enabled Hill to get the lead back in the course of the first lap. Ginther in the second BRM was third with Surtees, McLaren, Bonnier, Gurney and Tony Maggs (Cooper) giving chase. On the third lap Clark ran into gearbox trouble and had to pit and this left the BRMs running 1-2, although Ginther had to battle Surtees to hold on to second place. Behind them McLaren battled with the two Porsches.
Surtees retired on lap 42 with engine trouble and that left Hill and Ginther to win a dominant 1-2 victory for BRM. McLaren held off all challengers to take third place by a fraction of second from Mairesse.
Hill's win was not enough to clinch the World Championship but it looked like he was in an unassailable position with two races remaining.