Over the winter months there were only a few changes with McLaren (Alain Prost and Niki Lauda), Renault (Patrick Tambay and Derek Warwick), Ferrari (Michele Alboreto and René Arnoux) and Alfa Romeo (Riccardo Patrese and Eddie Cheever) unchanged. Tyrrell was due to run Martin Brundle and Stefan Bellof but the German had a falling out with the team boss and so Tyrrell put Stefan Johansson in for the event, Toleman being unable to compete because it could not find tyres, having fallen out with Pirelli and Goodyear refusing to supply more than eight teams. At Williams Keke Rosberg was joined by Nigel Mansell, while Jacques Laffite went back to Ligier as team mate to Andrea de Cesaris. This meant that François Hesnault moved to the second Brabham. ATS had closed down and so Gerhard Berger went to Arrows as partner to Thierry Boutsen while Lotus had hired Ayrton Senna to partner Elio de Angelis. Manfred Winkelhock joined Philippe Alliot at RAM, Jonathan Palmer having signed a deal with the new Zakspeed team (which would not appear until later in the year). Osella and Spirit struggled on with one car each: Piercarlo Ghinzani driving for the Italians and Mauro Baldi for Spirit. In addition there was the new Cosworth-engined Minardi driven by Pierluigi Martini. A Motori-Moderni turbo engine would follow later.

With only 25 cars everyone qualified in Brazil and Alboreto put one of the new Ferrari 156/85s on pole ahead of Rosberg, de Angelis, Senna, Mansell, Prost, Arnoux, Piquet, Lauda and Warwick. Fuel economy remained an important issue but the development of electronic engine management systems meant that there were fewer problems than in 1984.

Rosberg took the lead at the first corner while Alboreto had to fend off Mansell. The Englishman tried to go around the outside of the Ferrari and ended up in the catchfencing. Mansell did get going again but retired early. Alboreto's car did not handle well after the incident. Rosberg led for the first nine laps but on the tenth he suffered a turbocharger failure and Alboreto was left in the lead with Prost being him and Senna third until Lauda appeared as usual. On lap 19 Prost took the lead and motored away. Lauda disappeared with electronic problems and so Prost and Alboreto ended up being shadowed by the two Lotuses: Senna ahead of de Angelis, until Senna went out with electronic trouble in the closing laps. That left third place to de Angelis and fourth to Arnoux with Tambay and Laffite completing the points scorers.