The event was organised jointly by the Sporting Car Club of South Australia and the Barossa Valley Vintage Festival Association. The circuit used public roads around the town of Nuriootpa, measuring approximately 4.8 kilometres per lap. The race was run under Formula Libre regulations, meaning cars of varying specifications and engine capacities competed together, as was typical of Australian domestic racing in the immediate post-war era.
The immediate post-war years presented Australian motorsport with considerable logistical constraints. Competitors relied heavily on pre-war machinery and locally developed "specials" — cars built around available components, often with American V8 engines. European-specification grand prix machinery had not yet penetrated the Australian scene in meaningful numbers. Nuriootpa was one of a rotation of converted airfield circuits and street circuits — including Point Cook, Leyburn, and Narrogin — used during this period as the race moved between Australian states under a rotational arrangement fostered by the Australian Automobile Association.
The race used a handicap start format, with cars released progressively from slowest to fastest at timed intervals. The Australian Grand Prix title was awarded to the driver posting the fastest overall elapsed race time regardless of handicap position. All other official prizes and prize money — distributed across the first nine handicap finishers — were based on corrected handicap results. A separate trophy was therefore also presented to the handicap winner, who could be a different driver from the outright Grand Prix title holder.
Doug Whiteford drove a Ford V8 Special known as "Black Bess" to outright victory, completing the 34 laps almost three minutes faster than second-placed Rupert Steele, who drove an Alfa Romeo. Jim Gullan, piloting an Oldsmobile-powered Ballot Special, set the third-fastest elapsed time and was declared the official handicap winner, adding that trophy to his collection alongside his overall third-placed time result.
The shared fastest lap of 2 minutes 27 seconds — equivalent to 73.47 mph (118.2 km/h) — was set by both Rupert Steele and Doug Whiteford.
The 1950 Australian Grand Prix predated the modern Formula One World Championship, which began that same year with the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in May. The Australian race was therefore a non-championship domestic event, representative of a period when the country's premier motor racing title was contested primarily by locally developed machinery rather than purpose-built European grand prix cars.
Whiteford would go on to be a significant figure in Australian motorsport of the era. Two years later, at the 1952 Australian Grand Prix at Mount Panorama, he underlined the transition taking place in the sport by winning in a newly imported Talbot-Lago Formula One car — one of the first instances of genuine grand prix machinery decisively defeating the Australian specials on their home ground. Whiteford ultimately won three Australian Grands Prix in total.
The Nuriootpa circuit itself was among the temporary converted circuits that characterised Australian racing in the late 1940s and early 1950s, used to stage the national grand prix before the shift toward established permanent and semi-permanent venues in subsequent years.
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