There had been talk of holding the French Grand Prix at Albi but the locals were unable to raise the money and so the race went back to the Charade circuit, outside Clermont-Ferrand, for the second year running. Entries were restricted to 20 and with 23 cars arriving there were going to be disappointments. The entry was virtually as it had been three weeks earlier at Zandvoort where Piers Courage had been killed. Frank Williams did not make the trip to France and John Surtees was missing as well, preparing to debut his all-new F1 car. Denny Hulme was back in action, having recovered from the burns to his hands at Indianapolis while Ferrari ran Ignazio Giunti again in the second car.

Jochen Rindt had never liked the track - its undulations made him physically sick - and he liked even less after he was hit in the face by a stone in practice. Despite this he qualified the Lotus 72 in sixth position on the grid. Pole went to Jacky Ickx's Ferrari with Jean-Pierre Beltoise (the crowd favorite) second in his Matra. The second row featured the factory March of Chris Amon and Jackie Stewart's similar car being run by Ken Tyrrell. Then came Jack Brabham and Rindt and behind them Hulme's McLaren and Henri Pescarolo in the second Matra.

At the start Ickx went into the lead although he knew that his engine may fail after problems in the warming up session before the race. For the first 14 laps he led the race with Beltoise behind him. There was then quite a gap back to Stewart although he soon disappeared to the pits with ignition problems and third place was handed to Amon. He soon slipped behind Rindt and the order settled down. On lap 15 Ickx's race was run, his engine failing and so Beltoise took the lead and stayed there until lap 26 when he suffered a slow puncture. Rindt caught and overtook him and eventually Beltoise headed for the pits. Amon followed Rindt home with Brabham just third a few tenths ahead of Hulme.