Work began in 1954 to entirely revamp the Monza complex. The high-speed oval, measuring 4.250 km (2.641 mi), was constructed with steeply banked sopraelevata curves — the southern one was moved slightly northward relative to the original 1922 oval configuration. The oval and the Grand Prix road course shared the same main straight, allowing the two circuits to be combined into a 10.000 km (6.214 mi) course, replicating the original layout from the track's 1922 opening. The banked sections gave cars the ability to carry far higher speeds through the corners than any road circuit of the period allowed.
Formula One used the combined 10.000 km high-speed circuit for the Italian Grand Prix in 1955, 1956, 1960, and 1961. During that span, Stirling Moss and Phil Hill each won twice. Phil Hill's victory in 1960 made him the first American to win a Formula One world championship race.
The 1956 event saw Ferrari and Maserati machinery suffer mechanically on the banking, prompting a three-year absence from the combined layout. The 1960 race returned to the full circuit partly because Ferrari's principal advantage that season was straight-line speed, and the banked oval maximised it. The 1961 Italian Grand Prix proved to be the last Formula One race on the oval configuration. During that race, a collision between Wolfgang von Trips and Jim Clark sent von Trips' Ferrari airborne at the approach to the Parabolica; von Trips and fourteen spectators were killed. Although the accident did not occur on the banking itself, the extreme speeds the combined layout produced were judged unacceptable and Formula One never returned to the oval.
A further attempt was made in 1963, but the concrete banking had become severely bumpy and teams threatened to withdraw unless the event reverted to the road circuit. The high-speed oval's last major race was the 1969 1000 km of Monza, after which it fell permanently out of use.
The oval also hosted the Race of Two Worlds (Monzanapolis) events in 1957 and 1958, organised by the Automobile Club of Italy to pit USAC IndyCar machinery against European Formula One and sports cars in three heat races per year over 267.67 km each. European teams were largely outpaced: American cars running on specially reinforced Firestone tyres dominated both years. Jimmy Bryan won two heats in 1957 in his Kuzma-Offenhauser, with Troy Ruttman taking the third. Jim Rathmann swept all three heats in 1958. The European contingent — Ecurie Ecosse Jaguar D-types, Ferrari, and Maserati — were hampered by unsuitable tyres and the Maseratis' steering geometry being upset by the larger American tyre sizes.
Chicanes were added before both bankings in 1966 in an attempt to make the oval sections usable for regular racing. After another fatality in the 1968 1000 km race, run-off areas and permanent chicanes were incorporated, effectively routing the circuit around the banking entirely. The oval escaped demolition in the 1990s and physically survives within the Monza park in a decayed state. It is used once a year for the Monza Rally Show, and was restored sufficiently to host stages of the 2020 and 2021 World Rally Championship's final round, marking the first FIA championship event on any part of the oval layout since 1969.
The Monza banking represents a singular episode in European motorsport: a genuine attempt to merge transatlantic racing cultures on a single venue. Its brief Formula One career — four Grands Prix across seven years — was marked by tragedy, mechanical drama, and speeds that outpaced the tyre and suspension technology of the day. The structure's survival in the Monza park makes it one of the few physically intact remnants of the superspeedway era in continental Europe, visible to visitors walking the park paths and occasionally photographed as a monument to a more dangerous era of racing.
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