There had been no Belgian GP in 1969 because of questions over safety at Spa and considerable work had been done to improve the circuit but when the teams arrived in Belgium the talk was of Bruce McLaren who had been killed while testing a McLaren CanAm car at Goodwood on the Tuesday. Two days before the crash McLaren had been at Indianapolis where Denny Hulme was suffered serious burns to his hands. The plan was to replace "The Bear" with Peter Revson but after McLaren's accident the team did not make the trip to Spa. Johnny Servoz-Gavin was also missing, the Frenchman having announced that he was retiring from the sport because of an eyesight problem he had had since he had been hit in the face by a branch while taking part in an off road event during the winter. Tyrrell did not replace the Frenchman. Lotus brought along its new 72s as well as a fleet of old 49s while Ferrari expanded to two cars, Ickx being joined by 28-year-old Ignazio Giunti.

Qualifying resulted in Jackie Stewart taking pole in his Tyrrell March with Jochen Rindt (Lotus) and Chris Amon (March) alongside him. Jacky Ickx's Ferrari was on the second row with Jack Brabham's Brabham, while the third row consisted on Pedro Rodríguez (BRM), Rol Stommelen in the second Brabham and Giunti.

Rindt took off into the lead but Amon was able to get ahead during the first lap with Stewart also getting ahead of the Lotus. On the second lap Stewart took the lead but Amon responded and was back ahead in the course of the third lap. While this was going on Rodríguez moved head of Rindt to take third place and then passed Stewart on the fourth lap and Amon on the fifth to take the lead. For a while Amon battled with the Mexican in the BRM but then he began to drop away. Behind them Stewart found himself under attack from Brabham but Black Jack went off at Malmedy on the next lap when he found an oily rag tangled up in his pedals. Once he had sorted that out he attacked again and repassed Rindt and Stewart. Both went out soon afterwards and when Brabham suffered clutch failure third place went to Jean-Pierre Beltoise in the Matra. Henri Pescarolo looked to be on course for fourth place in the second Matra but he stopped with electrical trouble on the penultimate lap and so the place went to Giunti.