THE CHAMP, THE SPY, BIG BILL, AND THE ONE-TURN TRI-OVAL

THE IMPROBABLE TALE OF FUJI SPEEDWAY.

- BY PETE LYONS

A. (Previous pages) After a one-year hiatus, the third running of the Japanese Grand Prix moved to Fuji in 1966, with prototype and sports cars running clockwise and dangerously downhill into the Daiichi banked turn.

B. Charlie Moneypenny, pointing to the landscape. A bulldozer operator, Stirling Moss, and a bearded Don Nichols look on.

C. Mount Fuji provides the most stunning backdrop in all of racing. Equally stunning is that the banked turn, seen here in 1969, was used until 1974.

MOUNT FUJI, Japan’s iconically conical mountain peak, looms in serene beauty over a motor-racing facility that bears the same name but has always struggled to match the stratovolcano’s symmetrical perfection.

Conceived in 1963 as a Daytona-style NASCAR tri-oval superspeedway (yes, really), Fuji Speedway opened in 1966 as a road circuit with only one high-banked turn. Dubbed Daiichi, which translates to “number one” or “big one,” this long, fast, sharply downhill arc proved so hazardous that numerous early fatalities nearly forced the whole track to close.

Oblivion was averted by reengineering the circuit as a pure road course not once but multiple times. Fuji Speedway went on to host a USAC Indy-car event, two appearances by Can-Am cars, and four FIA Formula 1 grands prix—the first, in 1976, being so dramatic that it featured in a movie, Rush. The place survives today as one of Japan’s premier racing venues.

How did all of this happen? Initially through the ambitions of several local organizations invested in building their nation’s auto industry, as well as its tourism. Joining them were two entrepreneurial Americans already involved in racing, along with a retired British F1 driver named Stirling Moss and Bill France Sr. (a.k.a. “Big Bill”) of NASCAR, who approved a deal in 1963 to start the Japan NASCAR Company. (Again, it’s true.)