Fuji Speedway

Motorsport track in Japan

Fuji, Racing Beneath the Mountain

Planned as a Japanese superspeedway, Fuji became a road course with a vast straight, staging Japan's first Formula One race and a return 29 years later.

Fuji Speedway was meant to be an oval. A company formed in 1963 signed an agreement with NASCAR's founder, Bill France, and invited the designer of Daytona, but the steep ground at Oyama in Shizuoka Prefecture, on Mount Fuji's eastern foothills, was no place for a superspeedway. Stirling Moss, brought in as a consultant, argued instead for a road course in the European manner, and when Fuji opened in January 1966 only its steeply banked first turn remained of the American plan.

That banking proved dangerous. After a crash there in 1974 killed Hiroshi Kazato and Seiichi Suzuki, a new section was built to bypass it. Two years later Fuji held the first Formula One race in Japan, the last round of 1976. In heavy rain Niki Lauda withdrew because of the conditions, James Hunt scored enough to take the title, and Mario Andretti won the race. Hunt won the race the following year, but the 1977 event was marked by a crash involving Gilles Villeneuve that killed two spectators, and Formula One left Fuji. When Japan came back to the calendar ten years later, the race was held at Suzuka.

Through every version, the defining feature has been the main straight, about 1.5 kilometers long and among the longest in motorsport. Toyota bought the circuit from Mitsubishi Estate in 2000, closed it in 2003 and had Hermann Tilke reshape it. Most of the banking that had outlived the oval plan did not outlive the redesign, and the present 4.563 kilometer layout opened in 2005.

Formula One returned in 2007 after 29 years, and the weather picked up where it had left off: heavy rain and mist held the field behind the safety car for the first 19 laps, and Lewis Hamilton won. The event drew criticism for its transport problems and poor facilities. Fernando Alonso won in 2008 for Renault, and then the Japanese Grand Prix went back to Suzuka. Fuji held 4 championship rounds in all, from 1976 to 2008, and later welcomed the road cycling finishes of the 2020 Summer Olympics, a quieter kind of race beneath the same mountain.

Every Grand Prix here

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