Warwick Farm Raceway, a permanent road circuit near Sydney measuring 3.621 km (2.25 miles) per lap, hosted the event. The race was set over 45 laps totalling 162.945 km (101.25 miles). The 1963 summer season brought a particularly strong international field: Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren, John Surtees, Graham Hill, Tony Maggs, and Chris Amon all competed, most arriving as part of a broader Australasian swing.
The Bowmaker Racing Team fielded cars for Surtees in a Lola Mk.4 fitted with the Coventry Climax FPF 2.7-litre engine, and for Maggs and Jim Palmer in Cooper T55s also powered by Climax FPF engines. McLaren entered his own Cooper T62 Climax. Brabham drove a Repco Brabham BT4 Climax 2.7-litre entered by Ecurie Vitesse. Graham Hill was entered by the R.R.C. Walker Racing Team in a Ferguson P99 Climax 2.5-litre. David McKay drove a second Repco Brabham BT4 for Scuderia Veloce, and Australian champion Bib Stillwell drove a third BT4 under his own entry.
McLaren secured pole position with a lap of 1 minute 38.8 seconds, putting him well clear of the field in qualifying.
Brabham won the race from Surtees and McLaren, recording a race time of 1 hour 16 minutes 34.1 seconds at an average speed of 79.57 mph. The fastest lap was shared by Surtees and Brabham, both recording 1 minute 40.2 seconds — 80.84 mph. The margin between Brabham's winning time and Surtees's second place was just 8 seconds.
David McKay brought the fourth Repco Brabham home in fourth position, while Bib Stillwell finished fifth in the third BT4, a lap down. Hill took sixth in the Ferguson P99. New Zealand driver Tony Shelly was seventh in a Lotus 18/21, and Australian Frank Matich completed eighth in the Elfin Catalina Ford.
Tony Maggs retired from the race on lap 31 due to exhaustion — a result of the heat and physical demands of the circuit. Chris Amon, in a Scuderia Veloce Cooper T53, retired on lap 24 with fuel pump failure. Jim Palmer was out on lap 9 with a broken steering arm. Frank Gardner's Cooper T51-Maserati retired on the opening lap with a broken axle. John Youl was black-flagged on lap 25.
The victory was Brabham's second Australian Grand Prix win and the first by a driver in a self-developed car since Doug Whiteford had prevailed in his Ford V8 Special in 1950. The Bowmaker Racing Team's Lola Mk.4A chassis — the same car Surtees had raced in Formula One during 1962 — was noted for its semi-monocoque structure, an early application of that construction method in international racing. Surtees was on the cusp of his greatest season: in 1964 he would win the Formula One World Drivers' Championship with Ferrari.
Stirling Moss, still recovering from the near-fatal accident he suffered at Goodwood in April 1962, attended as a special guest. Moss had won the 1956 Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park in Melbourne driving a Maserati 250F. He provided guest television commentary for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation alongside Doug Woodward and Bill Reynolds, with Norman May serving as pit reporter.
The 1963 race is remembered as one of the strongest pre-World-Championship editions of the Australian Grand Prix in terms of international participation. The result was a significant early milestone for the Brabham constructor, which would go on to win the Formula One Constructors' Championship in 1966 and 1967. The prominence of the Coventry Climax FPF 2.7-litre engine across most of the leading entries reflected the engine's pre-eminence in Tasman and Formula Libre racing during this period, before the multi-cylinder BRM, Repco, and Ferrari units arrived in the mid-1960s.
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