The Brabham team brought along their regular two cars, BT34/1 for regular driver Carlos Reutemann from neighbouring Argentina, and BT 33/3 for Emerson Fittipaldi's older brother, Wilson, who was replacing Graham Hill for this occasion. It was not W. Fittipaldi's first Formula One race for it will be remembered he drove an elderly Lotus 49 in the non-championship Argentine GP in 1970. March Engineering brought along their older type 721 for Peterson plus the car that Beuttler drove at Brands, for local top sports car driver, Luiz Bueno who raced in British Formula Ford in 1969.
Marlboro-BRM turned up with a full complement of four cars, P160s for Beltoise, Gethin and Marko plus an older P153 for Soler-Roig, who was having his first F1 race since the Argentine GP. The field was completed by the Frank Williams team, who brought along their March 721 and 711 for Pescarolo and Pace. Thus, four of the twelve drivers were Brazilians. There was talk of Williams also running a borrowed Surtees for de Adamich but it did not materialise although the driver did.
Fittipaldi soon came to terms with his new Lotus and at the end of practice had lapped the twisty circuit in 2 min. 32.4 sec., a full two seconds faster than his nearest rival, Reutemann. On row two of the two-two grid was Peterson, just a fifth of a second slower, alongside W. Fittipaldi who was a full 3.9 sec. slower than his brother. Walker and Beltoise were on row three while the Williams team occupied row four with Pace, in only his second Formula One race, faster than team mate Pescarolo. Bueno, and the three other BRMs, completed the sparse field. Several "big noises" from Marlboro Europe were present and one presumes they weren't too impressed with the performance of the third of the field occupied by their red and white machines.
