After a year away at Rouen, the French Grand Prix returned to Reims and the field was much as normal with Jim Clark taking pole position in his Lotus from Graham Hill in the new BRM 61. On the outside of the front row was Dan Gurney's Brabham, while the second row featured John Surtees in his Ferrari alongside Jack Brabham's Brabham. The third row of the 3-2-3 grid featured two two Coopers of Bruce McLaren and Tony Maggs, split by the second Lotus of Trevor Taylor. Innes Ireland was 10th on the grid in the BRP-BRM and shared the fourth row of the grid with Jo Siffert's Siffert Racing Team Lotus-BRM. With BRM using the new car for Hill one of the older BRM 57s was made available to Scuderia Centro Sud to run for Lorenzo Bandini. Missing from the action was the ATS team which had not been successful in earlier races.

Ferrari suffered a setback when Ludovico Scarfiotti crashed in practice and injured his knee so he was unable to start.

The race itself began in chaotic fashion as the local officials decided on their own version of the F1 rules and so Graham Hill, who had stalled on the grid, was allowed to start from his usual position rather than at the back of the field. The starter then gave the starting signal using a red flag. Despite this the field managed to get away without undue drama and Clark took the lead. He was completely dominant all afternoon and won by over a minute. Behind the Lotus there were the usual slipstreaming battles but eventually Brabham emerged in second place until he suffered an engine problem and dropped back. This put Graham Hill into second but the BRM was in difficulties with a slipping clutch and on the penultimate lap Maggs passed him to take second place. It was later decided that Hill should be allowed to keep his position but he was not given the points because of his push-start.