The first World Championship event of the 1952 season was the Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten in Berne. The pre-championship season had seen attempts to continue with the existing Formula 1 flop because only the Ferrari team was competitive following the withdrawal from Grand Prix racing of Alfa Romeo. In the end it was decided that the World Championship should be run to Formula 2 regulations and there was a good turnout for the Swiss event. Ferrari had three 500s for Giuseppe Farina, Piero Taruffi and André Simon, Alberto Ascari being busy at Indianapolis and Luigi Villoresi out of action after a road accident. A similar car was entered by Ecurie Espadon for Rudolf Fischer and Ecurie Rosier had another for Louis Rosier. There were plans for a Maserati factory entry for Juan Manuel Fangio and José Froilán González with A6 GCMs but they did not appear. Gordini had three cars for Jean Behra, Prince Bira and Robert Manzon and HWM entered four cars for George Abecassis, Peter Collins, Stirling Moss and Lance Macklin. There were a couple of local machines, notably Hans Stuck Sr's AFM and Toni Ulmen's Veritas-Meteor and a trio of Bristol-engined cars: Ken Wharton's Frazer Nash and two Cooper 20s entered by Ecurie Richmond for Eric Brandon and Alan Brown.

In practice Farina was fastest with Taruffi and Manzon sharing the front row. behind them were Simon and Fischer with the third row being made up of Collins, Behra and Baron Emmanuel de Graffenried in an old Maserati entered by Enrico Platé. Moss was on the fourth row.

In the race Farina led until his Ferrari broke down. This left Taruffi in the lead all the way to the finish. Farina took over Simon's car but that also retired. Moss drove an impressive race early on but then had to stop leaving Behra and Simon battling for second place until Simon was called in. Behra was forced to stop because his exhaust pipe had fallen off and HE was overheating. This enabled Farina to get back into second in Simon's car before his retirement. That meant that Fischer was second, the only man not lapped by Taruffi. Behra was a gallant third with Wharton fourth.