Three previous South African Grands Prix have been of world championship status at the coastal resort of East London. However, after the 1966 race being a non-championship event the venue has been moved to the 2.5-mile circuit at Kyalami, just outside Johannesburg. The circuit is narrow, but interesting, the corners being varied and tricky, with a reasonable straight and fair pits. One disadvantage of this circuit is that it is 5,000 feet above sea level and when the weather is hot all the atmospheric and fuel vaporising problems arise. The lap speed stood at just over 100mph and was held by John Love’s Cooper-Climax 2.7.
All the major GP teams had accepted entries with the exception of Ferrari who could not get cars ready in time due to the racing department being rebuilt.
The Brabham team had two cars for Brabham and Hulme. These were unaltered since Mexico and were in their usual well-prepared state. Coopers had brought two cars for Rindt and Rodriguez. Both had the wide-angled inlet trumpets and had Magneti Marelli coil ignition. The car driven by Rodriguez was the one used in Mexico by Surtees, and in a pre-practice run the Mexican settled in very quickly except for vaporisation which slowed him after every few laps.
