The second round of the World Championship came a month after the Swiss Grand Prix, during which time Ferrari had picked up wins in a variety of races across the Continent. As the teams gathered for the race there came the sad news that Luigi Fagioli had died in hospital as a result of his crash on May 31 in the sportscar Grand Prix at Monaco.

The Maserati team was still not ready with its new cars and its lead driver Juan Manuel Fangio was out of action after suffering serious back injuries in the non-championship Monza GP. This left Ferrari was once against up against Gordini, HWM and a colorful mixture of others in Cooper-Bristols, an ERA (with Stirling Moss driving), an Aston-Butterworth, a Frazer Nash and a Veritas-Meteor.

Practice ended with Piero Taruffi fastest in his Ferrari followed by his teammates Giuseppe Farina and Alberto Ascari. Jean Behra and Robert Manzon shared the second row in their Gordinis while Paul Frère (HWM), Ken Wharton (Frazer Nash) and Mike Hawthorn (Cooper-Bristol) lined up on the third row.

It was raining when the race began and Taruffi made a bad start to drop down the field while Behra used all his skill to get ahead of Ascari and Farina on the first lap. Moss also drove a tremendous half a lap before his ERA broke down. Ascari and Farina soon overtook Behra while Taruffi battled through the field and eventually took third from Behra on lap 13. Taruffi then spun at Malmedy and Behra hit him. On the same lap Manzon overtook Hawthorn to run third. Hawthorn's car later started leaking fuel but managed to hold on to fourth place. Fifth went to Frère and sixth to Alan Brown's Cooper-Bristol.