There was a huge field of 31 cars for the final race of the year with many teams entering third cars. Team Lotus had Dave Walker and Reine Wisell alongside Emerson Fittipaldi, while Tyrrell ran a third car for Patrick Depailler. McLaren ran its spare car for a youngster called Jody Scheckter. Surtees loaned out one car to Sam Posey while running Tim Schenken, Mike Hailwood and Andrea de Adamich. John Surtees himself briefly drove a fifth car but did not race. BRM had four cars as in Canada but Bill Brack was replaced by Brian Redman.

Qualifying saw Jackie Stewart fastest for Tyrrell with Peter Revson and Denny Hulme alongside him on the front row in their McLarens. François Cévert shared the second row with Carlos Reutemann's Brabham while Clay Regazzoni (Ferrari), Chris Amon (Matra) and the impressive young Scheckter were on the third row. Emerson Fittipaldi and Mario Andretti (Ferrari) completed the top 10. On Sunday morning Amon ran into trouble and so decided to start from the back in a spare car, leaving his grid position vacant.

At the start Stewart went into the lead with Hulme second but Regazzoni ran into Reutemann and Revson. This enabled Fittipaldi to grab third place with Scheckter fourth, a fast-starting Jacky Ickx (Ferrari) fifth and then the recovering Regazzoni. Both Revson and Reutemann had to stop for repairs. On lap five Fittipaldi had to pit because of a slow puncture and so Scheckter moved to third place. Cévert now began to charged and after passing the Ferraris he was able to catch and overtake Scheckter for third place. At half distance Cévert caught and passed Hulme to give Tyrrell a 1-2. When rain started to fall Scheckter made a mistake a spun, dropping down the order and so fourth place went to Ronnie Peterson's March with Ickx behind him.