Patrick Tambay was back in action after his Monaco accident, Jonathan Palmer had returned to RAM (having missed Canada because of the Le Mans 24 Hours) and Teo Fabi was back in place of Corrado in the second Brabham. After Nelson Piquet's dominant win in Canada it was expected that the Brabham-BMW would be very competitive in Detroit. And so he proved to be, taking pole position by a large margin ahead of Alain Prost's World Championship-leading McLaren-TAG, Nigel Mansell's Lotus-Renault, Michele Alboreto (Ferrari), Elio de Angelis (Lotus-Renault), Derek Warwick (Renault), Ayrton Senna (Toleman-Hart), Eddie Cheever (Alfa Romeo), Tambay and Niki Lauda (McLaren-TAG).

At the start Piquet was slow away and Prost was alongside him. Mansell, going faster than both men ahead of him, tried to get between them and nudged Piquet into the wall. The Brazilian was then hit at high speed by the Arrows of Marc Surer. Piquet's front wheel bounced across the road and destroyed Senna's suspension. The race was stopped. Piquet and Senna went into spare cars but there was no T-car for Surer and so he could not take the restart.

At the second attempt Piquet went away well with Prost and Mansell chasing followed by Alboreto, Cheever, Warwick and the rest. As had happened in Canada Piquet led from flag to flag. The stars of the show proved to be Martin Brundle and Stefan Bellof who drove their Tyrrells up through the field to run fifth and sixth by the time they stopped in the mid-race. Bellof then crashed out but Brundle went on to finish second as Warwick and Alboreto dropped out and de Angelis fell back to third. There were only three other finishers with Teo Fabi fourth, Prost fifth after a troubled race which included a spin and a second pit stop as a result and Jacques Laffite (Williams-Honda).