Strikes in Italy meant that Ferrari did not appear for the British GP but the team released Tony Brooks, who had just won the French Grand Prix, and he managed to get a drive in a Vanwall which was made available by Tony Vandervell. Without Ferrari the battle was entirely between British cars with BRM (Harry Schell, Jo Bonnier, Ron Flockhart and private entry Stirling Moss), Aston Martin (Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby), Cooper (Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren and Masten Gregory in factory cars and a variety of private entries) and Lotus (Graham Hill and Alan Stacey) all in action. The field was bolstered as usual by a number of local F1 cars and a number of Formula 2 machines as well.

Brabham was fastest in practice with a surprising Salvadori second, ahead of Schell, Trintignant, Gregory, Shelby, Moss and McLaren. Brooks qualified the Vanwall 17th.

At the start Brabham took the lead and never really looked under threat but there was a good battle for second place with Moss moving through to lead the chasers. This pattern would remain the same at the finish despite the fact that Moss had an unscheduled pit stop which allowed McLaren to briefly take second place. The two battled to the line side-by-side, Moss winning by two-tenths of a second.