South African GP, 1963

Two months after the Mexican GP, the final round of the World Championship took place in South Africa. It was interesting only in that it gave World Champion Jim Clark the opportunity to set a new record for the number of wins in a season. The opposition to Team Lotus came from Ferrari, Brabham, BRM and Cooper and Rob Walker took Jo Bonnier along in a private Cooper. The rest of the field was made up of enthusiastic locals who every year provided the F1 teams with a market for their old machinery. Clark qualified on pole position with the Brabhams of Jack Brabham and Dan Gurney alongside. The second row was shared by the Ferraris of John Surtees and Lorenzo Bandini and then came Graham Hill and Ritchie Ginther in their BRMs and Trevor Taylor in the second Lotus.

At the start of the race Brabham took the advantage off the line but Clark and Surtees quickly pushed him back to third position, while Taylor made a good start to run fourth ahead of Gurney, Brabham and the rest. The two Brabham drivers quickly overtook the Lotus and began to look for a way of overtaking Surtees. By the time they had done that Clark was seven seconds ahead. The challenge from Brabham faded when Brabham began to lose power and dropped back and was overtaken by Surtees and Hill (Taylor having spun off and dropped down the field). Surtees retired later with an engine problem, which elevated Graham Hill to third at the finish. Ginther would have been fourth but he suffered a transmission problem, while Brabham spun in the closing laps and had to retire. This meant that Bruce McLaren ended up fourth in his Cooper-Climax with Bandini fifth and Bonnier sixth, although he was two laps behind.