The 1963 Formula One season was the 17th season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It featured the 14th World Championship of Drivers, the 6th International Cup for F1 Manufacturers, and numerous non-championship Formula One races. The World Championship was contested over ten races between 26 May and 28 December 1963.

Jim Clark driving for Lotus won his first Drivers' Championship with three races to go. He won seven races in the championship, a number that would not be beaten until 1988, when Ayrton Senna won eight, and a win percentage that nearly beat Alberto Ascari's record from 1952. Lotus also won the Manufacturers' Championship for the first time.

Every pole position and race in the 1963 championship were won by British drivers, the first time that this was achieved by any single nation. (Italy is sometimes considered to have achieved this feat in 1952, but this only goes if the Indianapolis 500 is excluded from the statistic.)

The following teams and drivers competed in the 1963 FIA World Championship. All teams competed with tyres supplied by Dunlop.

The Monaco Grand Prix received the honorary title of European Grand Prix and, more importantly, functioned as the 1963 season opener. With little driver changes in the front-running teams and constructors withholding to introduce new designs to the narrow streets of Monte Carlo, the battle between the 1962 championship protagonists was expected to restart. Only five drivers were guaranteed a starting place: the previous World Champions or winners of the Monaco Grand Prix. The rest had to fight in qualifying over the remaining eleven spaces. 1962's runner-up Jim Clark managed this with ease in his Lotus-Climax. He posted the fastest practice time and started the race on pole position. Reigning champion Graham Hill started second in his BRM, while John Surtees (Ferrari) and Richie Ginther (BRM). Hill and Ginther took the lead at the start, but the first nine cars kept going nose-to-tail. Clark managed to get past Hill on lap 7, but then went wide at the Station hairpin and going down to third once again. He tried again and the lead changes hands multiple times, before Clark went ahead definitively and increased his lead to 17 seconds at three-quarters race-distance. Then suddenly, his gearbox jammed and his wheels locked. Hill was gifted the win, ahead of teammate Ginther and Bruce McLaren in the Cooper.

The Belgian Grand Prix was run at Spa-Francorchamps, one of the fastest circuits of the year, with the 1.5 litre cars running full throttle for some three minutes per lap. Clark was still suffering from gearbox issues, so Hill took pole position, ahead of Dan Gurney (Brabham) and local hero Willy Mairesse (Ferrari). Clark started eighth, but somehow, managed to take the lead before the first corner was reached. Hill followed him and the pair had a 15-second lead after the first lap. The race was run in very wet conditions and Clark had the upper-hand, stretching out a lead of his own to almost 30 seconds at half-distance. Then when Hill's gearbox broke, his win looked sealed, expect the heaviest storm of the day flooded the track. Five drivers crashed and it was discussed to stop the race, but Clark cautiously completed the laps, ahead of McLaren and Gurney.

Moving north some 300 km (190 mi), Circuit Zandvoort hosted the Dutch Grand Prix. Clark started on pole, ahead of Hill and McLaren. The three arrived side-by-side at Tarzan corner, but the positions were unchanged. Brabham had started fourth but got up to second while his teammate Gurney drew everyone's attention with a heroic recovery drive after a bad start. Hill got back up to second, but his BRM was overheating. Gurney had climbed to fourth, but a strut underneath the car had come loose and a pit stop brought him back down the order. Hill's engine had enough on lap 58 and he was forced to pit, letting Surtees into second and Gurney up to third. The latter had been working wonders again, but Clark, meanwhile, was a lap ahead of everyone else. He won the race to make it a "grand slam", ahead of Gurney and Surtees, a late spin by the Ferrari driver gave Gurney a deserved place as 'best-of-the-rest'.

In the Drivers' Championship, Jim Clark (Lotus) was leading with 18 points, ahead of Richie Ginther (BRM with 11 and Bruce McLaren (Cooper) and Dan Gurney (Brabham), both with 10. Lotus was leading the Manufacturers' Championship with 19 points, ahead of BRM with 14 and Cooper and Brabham with 10.