The Japan NASCAR Company, established in December 1963, initially planned to build a 2.5-mile high-banked superspeedway at Oyama in cooperation with NASCAR founder Bill France. Charles Moneypenny, designer of Daytona International Speedway, was brought in to oversee the project but quickly concluded that the steep terrain at the foot of Mount Fuji was unsuitable for an oval. Stirling Moss, hired as a consultant in August 1964, dismissed the oval concept as nonsensical and proposed European-style layouts instead.
Following management upheaval caused by funding problems in January 1965, the company severed its NASCAR agreement, renamed itself Fuji International Speedway Corporation, and restarted the project as a road course. The defining compromise was retaining a 30-degree banked first turn from the original superspeedway design. Mitsubishi Estate stepped in to manage the final construction phase, and the circuit opened in January 1966.
The original circuit measured approximately 4.3 km with the banked section included. Its central danger was the approach to the banking: cars crested a blind hill at speeds of around 300 km/h before plunging down into the steeply banked first turn, the opposite of the upward climb drivers experienced at Daytona or Montlhéry. Driver Vic Elford described the entry as horrific, noting that many Japanese drivers lacked the skill to manage it and that fatalities from that single corner were frequent.
The remainder of the circuit featured several high-speed corners and a long front straight. After a fatal accident in 1974 killed drivers Hiroshi Kazato and Seiichi Suzuki, a new section of track was built to bypass the most dangerous portions, resulting in a revised 4.359 km layout. This change also eliminated five other fast corners while leaving the basic character of the track intact.
The circuit hosted the Japanese motorcycle Grand Prix in 1966 and 1967 as the final round of the FIM Road Racing World Championship. In 1966 the full track with its banking was used, a configuration so dangerous that the Honda works team refused to participate on safety grounds. The following year, racing was moved to a shorter 4.3 km version without the banked section.
In 1966, the track hosted a USAC Indy Car non-championship race won by Jackie Stewart. The circuit also hosted a 24-hour race in 1967 and was used by Toyota for extended testing programs through the late 1960s, including development work on the Toyota 7 sports car.
The layout's moment of greatest international significance came at the end of the 1976 Formula One season, when it hosted Japan's first-ever Formula One World Championship Grand Prix. The race was run in heavy rain and produced one of motorsport's most dramatic title conclusions: Niki Lauda withdrew citing the dangerous conditions, allowing James Hunt to claim enough points to win the Drivers' Championship. Mario Andretti won the race itself.
The 1977 Japanese Grand Prix returned to Fuji but ended in catastrophe when Gilles Villeneuve was involved in a crash that killed two spectators. Formula One departed the circuit, and when Japan next appeared on the F1 calendar a decade later, the race went to Suzuka instead.
The original Fuji layout, particularly the banked section, became a symbol of motorsport's transition away from speed-above-safety circuit design. After the 1977 incident, national racing continued at a modified version of the circuit through the 1980s and 1990s, with the FIA World Sportscar Championship visiting between 1982 and 1988. Chicanes were added progressively to contain speeds on the very long straight and fast final turn.
Toyota acquired the circuit from Mitsubishi Estate in 2000, and beginning in 2003 the track was closed for a comprehensive redesign by Hermann Tilke. The new circuit that reopened in 2005 retained the famous long straight — still one of the longest in motorsport at approximately 1.475 km — but the original banked turn was demolished, with only a small fragment remaining. Formula One returned to the Tilke-designed circuit in 2007 and 2008 before reverting to Suzuka.
The 1966 layout's legacy lives on through its representation in motorsport simulation software: the original track appears in Grand Prix Legends, rFactor, and various GTR titles, while the current layout features in the Gran Turismo series and iRacing.