Construction of Fuji Speedway was planned by the Japan NASCAR Company, established in December 1963 following an agreement with NASCAR founder Bill France to host American-style oval racing in the Far East. The original design called for a 2.5-mile high-banked superspeedway in the Oyama area at the foot of Mount Fuji. Charles Moneypenny, designer of Daytona International Speedway, was invited in July 1964 to oversee the project, but quickly determined that the steep terrain was unsuitable for a true oval.
Retired Formula One driver Stirling Moss was engaged as a consultant. Inspecting the site in August 1964, Moss dismissed the Daytona-style oval as impractical and instead proposed a European road course layout. The Japan NASCAR Company underwent management restructuring in January 1965, terminated its NASCAR agreement, and renamed itself Fuji International Speedway Corporation. The circuit was redesigned as a road course, but retained one prominent feature of the superspeedway concept: the 30-degree banked first turn, which remained a defining and dangerous element of the track.
Mitsubishi Estate stepped in to take over management in October 1965 as the project faced further financial turmoil. Construction was completed in December 1965 and the circuit opened in January 1966.
The 1966 circuit incorporated the steeply banked first turn at the end of a long pit straight, followed by a predominantly conventional road course layout. The banked section was run in a downhill direction — unlike banked corners at Daytona or Montlhery where cars climb the banking — which dramatically amplified entry speeds and reduced driver control.
Test driver Vic Elford, who drove for Toyota at Fuji in 1969, described the approach to the banking as passing over a blind crest at approximately 190–200 mph before dropping down into the turn. He noted that the downhill entry produced a far more dangerous dynamic than banked corners elsewhere in the world, contributing to a high accident rate — particularly among the local field of Japanese drivers.
The circuit originally hosted both motorcycle and car racing. In 1966 and 1967 it staged the Japanese motorcycle Grand Prix as the final round of the FIM Road Racing World Championship. The 1966 motorcycle race used the full banked circuit; Honda's works team declined to participate that year citing safety concerns. The 1967 motorcycle race was instead run on a shorter 4.3 km configuration that bypassed the banked section. In 1966 the track hosted a non-championship USAC Indy Car race, won by Jackie Stewart.
The banked layout was responsible for a series of accidents throughout its operational years. A fatal accident in 1974 in the Daiichi banking section killed drivers Hiroshi Kazato and Seiichi Suzuki in a fiery crash that also injured six other people. In response, a new section of track was constructed to bypass the most dangerous portion of the banking, producing a revised circuit of approximately 4.359 km. This alteration also eliminated five other fast corners, and the resulting layout proved significantly safer.
Fuji Speedway brought Formula One to Japan for the first time using the modified 1976 configuration, which retained a shortened version of the original straight but no longer used the full steeply banked first turn. That race produced a dramatic World Championship decider between James Hunt and Niki Lauda, with Mario Andretti taking the victory.
The original 1966 banking layout represented a brief and dangerous experiment in blending American superspeedway design with a road course environment. Its failure to safely accommodate the speeds and handling demands placed on it — combined with the specific hazard of its downhill bank entry — forced successive modifications that ultimately produced a fundamentally different circuit.
When Toyota acquired the majority interest in Fuji Speedway in 2000 and commissioned a comprehensive redesign from architect Hermann Tilke, the circuit was closed in 2003 and underwent a complete reprofiling. Most of the remaining original banked section was demolished during this work. A small remnant of the banking survived and remained visible as a historical artifact of the circuit's original concept. The renovated circuit reopened in April 2005 and hosted Formula One again in 2007 and 2008.