McLaren won by six-tenths of a second over French driver Maurice Trintignant driving a Rob Walker Racing Team-entered Cooper T51.

Championship points leader Australian Jack Brabham ran out of fuel on the last lap and pushed his Cooper T51 across the line to finish fourth.

That record was held by American driver Troy Ruttman who had won the 1952 Indianapolis 500 when aged 22 years, 2 months and 19 days.

Originally scheduled as the year's opening round, the now season-concluding Sebring race saw the Championship down to Cooper versus Ferrari.

The field featured works Coopers for Brabham and 22-year-old Bruce McLaren of New Zealand; blue Rob Walker-entered Coopers for Moss and Frenchman Maurice Trintignant; four Ferraris — three in Italian red for Englishmen Brooks and Cliff Allison, and German Wolfgang von Trips; one in American white and blue for Phil Hill; front-engined Lotuses for Innes Ireland and Alan Stacey; and, incomprehensibly for the European road-racing elite, the number 1 Kurtis-Offy midget of USAC National Champion Rodger Ward, the only American-built and American-driven entry.

Ward, who had won the Indy 500 that year and would win it again in 1962, told the Cooper team members he was in Sebring to drive a dirt track car.

The 3:05.2 lap that got Schell on the front row apparently had come at the tail end of the session, and had gone unnoticed by almost everyone; his best time previously had been 3:11.2, good enough for 11th.

Protests ensued from nearly every other team, most vociferously Ferrari, whose man, Brooks, was displaced on the front row.

Moss led the race from the start and built a gap of ten seconds over Brabham, but after only five laps he retired with a broken gearbox.

Midway through, with half the field out due to mechanical problems, Brabham slowed to allow McLaren to close up to him, and Trintignant's Rob Walker Cooper began taking huge bites off their lead, as his pit crew kept him informed of his position.

He had refused to follow Team Manager Cooper's exhortations to start the race on full tanks, hoping instead to find more speed from a lighter car.

Brooks's third place gave Ferrari second place in the Constructors' Championship; Innes Ireland was fifth, three laps down in his Lotus, and Wolfgang von Trips ended up sixth after his Ferrari's engine gave way with four laps to go.

[citation needed] Despite the exciting finish of the race and the championship, however, the United States Grand Prix at Sebring was a financial disaster.

The crowd was half the size of that year's 12 Hours of Sebring sports car race, and after distributing the $15,000 purse, including a huge $6,000 winner's share, Alec Ulmann just about broke even.