Chris Amon, on pole position for Ferrari, retired on lap 8 with an oil radiator failure. Jackie Stewart had led the race for the bulk of its distance but ran out of fuel approaching Blanchimont on the final lap, leaving McLaren to inherit the lead and take the win. Stewart coasted in to finish fourth. Pedro Rodríguez completed second place for BRM, and Jacky Ickx — Amon's Ferrari teammate — took third in what was his first podium in Formula One, racing without the aerodynamic wing that had given Amon such a dramatic qualifying advantage.
Further retirements shortened what had been a competitive field. John Surtees retired on lap 11 with a suspension failure, and Denny Hulme exited on lap 18 with a broken cardan shaft. McLaren had started sixth and worked through the order progressively as faster cars ahead fell away.
McLaren's victory made Bruce McLaren only the third driver in Formula One history to win a Grand Prix in a car of his own construction, following Jack Brabham and Dan Gurney. He drove the McLaren M7A, a new car built around a monocoque chassis with a Ford Cosworth DFV engine. It was McLaren's fourth and final win as a Formula One driver; he was killed in an accident during a CanAm test at Goodwood in June 1970.
Spa 1968 stands as a landmark in the rapid spread of aerodynamic wings through the Formula One paddock. Lotus had introduced dive-plane wings on the nosecone at the immediately preceding Monaco Grand Prix, and Ferrari arrived at Spa with a strut-mounted, negative-incidence wing fitted to Amon's car. The effect was dramatic: Amon claimed pole position and was four seconds per lap faster in qualifying than the next-quickest car, driven by Jackie Stewart. Amon himself suggested he had achieved comparable times without the wings, though the margin in qualifying spoke for itself.
Ferrari's approach was considered and conservative. Enzo Ferrari refused to mount wings directly to suspension elements, judging it too dangerous, and his team anchored their wings to chassis structure instead. Amon's teammate Ickx raced at Spa without wings at all, though they were added to his car for the following Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort.
The Brabham team also experimented at Spa, fitting a rear wing to Jack Brabham's car alongside nose dive planes to manage the aerodynamic balance. As the season progressed, other teams adopted strut-mounted wings attached directly to suspension elements — a practice derived from Chaparral sports car racing — in pursuit of lower lap times. Ferrari, following Enzo's directive, never adopted suspension-mounted wings, continuing throughout with chassis-mounted struts.
On the seventh lap, Brian Redman lost control of his Cooper following a suspension failure. The car left the circuit, struck a concrete barrier, and came to rest against a parked vehicle. The Cooper caught fire. Redman escaped but sustained a severely broken right arm and minor burns.
The weekend was further shadowed by the death of Ludovico Scarfiotti, who was killed during a hillclimb practice session on the Saturday before the Grand Prix.