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• Genuine Yamaha factory OW31 works machine – never offered for sale to private entrants
• One of the two identical works machines with which Johnny Cecotto won the 1978 Formula 750 World Championship, raced again unchanged in 1979 and 1980 Imola 200 Victory
• Ridden by Johnny Cecotto, on the frame it carries today, to four wins from four starts at the 1979 Coppa delle Nazioni ahead of Sheene, Roberts, Mamola, Pons and Lucchinelli and to victory in the 1980 Imola 200 ahead of Roberts and Luchinelli, third time winning the 200 Miles of Imola after wins in '75 and '78
• In Johnny Cecotto's ownership ever since; never restored; recommissioned once, by Domenico Pettinari, for the Monza demonstration of October 2000
• Works power-jet carburettors; Motociclismo technical examination of 2000 on file

Formula 750 was conceived as a class for production-based machines, and Yamaha's customer TZ750 gave privateers the world over the means to compete in it. The OW31 was something else entirely. Yamaha's own racing archive describes it as 'a factory machine designed for competition in the World F750 and Daytona 200': the works OW29 engine in the YZR500 Grand Prix chassis, with the magnesium and titanium components largely absent from the production bikes, and with its power ultimately raised to some 160PS. It was built in very small numbers solely for Yamaha's contracted riders – Steve Baker took the 1977 title on one, and Johnny Cecotto and Kenny Roberts fought out 1978 on them – and it was never offered for sale. The customer TZ750D of 1977 was developed from it, not the other way round.

Johnny Cecotto was born in 1956 in Venezuela to Italian immigrant parents. Riding a Manx Norton, his father Giovanni had won the Venezuelan championship, so there was a degree of inevitability about Johnny's progression into motorcycle racing. In 1972 his father bought him a Honda 750, and Johnny's promising early results led to an offer from the local Kawasaki importer. But it would be under the banner of Venemotos, the Venezuelan Yamaha importer, that Johnny would gain international recognition.

Riding a Yamaha TZ350, he won the 1973 Venezuelan national road racing championship at the age of 17. He retained the championship the following year and also took the Latin American title. That same year Johnny competed at the prestigious Daytona 200 for the first time, finishing in an unremarkable 35th place. For 1975 Venemotos provided Johnny with a new Yamaha TZ700. Despite being a customer bike, and not a fully fledged works machine, Johnny qualified it in 3rd spot on the grid, taking his place alongside the likes of pole-sitter Kenny Roberts, Gene Romero, Tepi Lansivuori and Steve Baker; it was a sensational performance for a rookie. Pulled from the grid because of a mistaken belief his bike was leaking oil, Johnny was subsequently allowed to join the race, working his way up from last place to 3rd at the finish - a truly bravura performance.

On the world stage Johnny contested the 350cc and 250cc championships for the first time in 1975, defeating Italian ace Giacomo Agostini to take the '350' crown and finishing 4th in the '250' category. At the tender age of 19, Johnny was at that time the youngest World Champion in the history of the sport. He also won the prestigious Imola 200 Formula 750 race that year. Not surprisingly, there was a measure of Yamaha support for 1976 in the form of machines for the '500' and 350' classes, entered by a factory-supported satellite team under the Venemotos banner. Johnny's season started with a win at the Daytona 200; sadly, that would prove to be the high spot of his 1976 campaign, as the Yamaha YZR500 was not competitive and Johnny struggled to repeat his 1975 form in the '350' class.

Badly injured at the start of the 1977 season, Johnny took a while to recover but still managed to win two more 500cc GPs and another in the '350' class before the end of the year. Johnny began the 1978 season by winning the Formula 750 Imola 200 for a second time, but in the '500' class he faced a new rival for the world championship in the shape of American ace Kenny Roberts. One victory and four podium finishes were his best results in the 500cc World Championship in a season dogged by inconsistency.

He was more successful in Formula 750 in 1978 - the sixth season of the FIM Formula 750 Championship and the second to have full World Championship status - where his three wins and three second-place finishes on the works Yamaha OW31 proved good enough to beat Kenny Roberts by five points. Johnny won the Italian, French and Belgian rounds; finished 2nd in the UK, Austria and Spain; 3rd in Holland; and 5th in Canada.

Johnny defended his Formula 750 crown in 1979, but despite five victories and two 2nd places, could only finish 3rd in the World Championship behind Michel Frutschi and winner Patrick Pons. Had he not suffered another injury mid-season, causing him to miss three rounds, he might well have won the F750 World Championship for a second time. The series was not run after 1979. Johnny won the most races of the Formula 750 series with 13 wins whilst Kenny Roberts and Steve Baker had 12 wins each.

Yamaha withdrew factory support at the end of 1979, and 1980 would see Johnny campaigning a Yamaha-powered Bimota in the '350' class and a customer Yamaha in the '500' category. He began the year with another victory at the Imola 200, his third Imola 200 victory. His World Championship campaign started on a positive note with victory at the season-opening 350cc French Grand Prix together with a fourth-place finish in the 500cc race. Sadly, after this initial success Johnny's season was dogged by mechanical failures; he could do no better than a fourth-place finish in the 350cc championship and seventh in the 500cc championship.

After the 1980 season, at the age of only 24, Johnny decided to quit motorcycle racing to pursue a car-racing career. In 1980, Johnny signed on for F2 and joined Mike Earle Racing with March and Minardi to end the season. In 1981, Johnny carried on with the Minardi team and then finished the season with Horag Hotz Racing but it was 1982 where Johnny signed for March Racing Ltd and in his debut season with them, he was leading the championship up until the last race where Stefan Bellof pushed him off track in the first lap of the race and resulted in Johnny losing the championship by 1 point. After a blockbuster season in F2, Johnny reached the pinnacle of motor racing and joined F1 team Theodore Racing Team where he scored points in the second race at Long Beach.

In 1984, Johnny joined the Toleman Hart Turbo team where he was teammates with the legendary Ayrton Senna (joining Toleman in his first season in F1), however at the British Grand Prix Johnny had a terrible crash at Westfields resulting in both legs being broken which effectively ended his F1 career.

Not to be deterred and showing his fighting spirit, he came back in 1985 to join the Schnitzer Motorsport BMW team for the flourishing Group A touring car category with his best finish being second at the Spa 24 Hours, this starting a close relationship with BMW which is still going strong today. From 1988 to 1992, Johnny competed in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft (DTM) series. In 1988, his first year of DTM, he was a works driver for the AMG-Mercedes team where he delivered 4 wins, then in 1989, he signed on for Schnitzer Motorsport BMW M3 with him being an official works driver from 1989 until 1998. In 1989 (his first season with BMW), he won the Italian Superturismo, the same year BMW Motorsport built the Johnny Cecotto Limited Edition. For the 1990 season, he finished as runner up, he was leading the championship until the last race when a young Michael Schumacher pushed him off in the first lap and Johnny ended up finishing second in the championship, however the year before Johnny Johnny also drove in endurance racing, winning the 1990 24 Hours of Spa; the 1992 24 Hours of Nürburgring; and the 1997 Mil Milhas Brasil. In 1994 and 1998, he won the German Super Tourenwagen Cup Championship for BMW and drove for the German manufacturer in the 1995 British Touring Car Championship. In 2001 and 2002, he drove for Opel and won the German V8 Star Championship two years running.

Meanwhile, Johnny's Yamaha OW31 remained in garage storage for more than 20 years before its resurrection at Monza in October 2000, where, at the invitation of Italian motorcycle magazine, Motociclismo, he agreed to ride it once again, 22 years after winning the Formula 750 World Championship.

However, the years of inactivity had left their mark, and the Yamaha required a major overhaul. Assistance came from Domenico Pettinari, a respected restorer of British and Japanese motorcycles, and formerly mechanic for Gianfranco Bonera when Bonera competed in the Formula 750 World Championship aboard a Yamaha in 1978 and '79. Quoted in Motociclismo, Pettinari declared, "As soon as the bike appeared in my workshop, I knew it was the real one. Guaranteed!"

In just two days, Pettinari completely refurbished the machine. The biggest problem, though, was the tyres, which were of a size no longer available as slicks. Fortunately, Michelin were able to supply road tyres in the sizes required. It would prove to be a blessing in disguise, as the weather at Monza was atrocious.

Despite the miserable weather, Johnny headed out onto the track, pushed by Domenico Pettinari. Johnny rode the OW31 works bike wearing the same type of leathers and gloves he used back in 1978. Only the helmet was modern, although featuring the same colours he raced with during his career. The Yamaha has been dormant since then but Domenico Pettinari has said that he put it away so it could easily be recommissioned.

Far too lengthy to reproduce here, Motociclismo's article includes a detailed technical comparison between Johnny Cecotto's World Championship-winning factory OW31 and a standard customer Yamaha TZ750, concluding: "Today it is difficult to untangle the countless modifications made over the years to both factory and private Yamaha 750s. One thing is certain, however: this motorcycle is the genuine 1978 World Championship winning machine." A scanned copy of the Motociclismo article (in Italian) is on file.

Offered for sale directly from Cecotto, this is one of the two identical works OW31s run for Cecotto by the Yamaha factory team in 1978, the season in which he won the Imola 200 and the Formula 750 World Championship, and again, unchanged, in 1979. When Yamaha's Formula 750 programme ended, the team's numbered chassis returned to Japan under the customs carnets on which the works machines travelled. This machine, which had been shipped to Europe as spares on a factory OW31 spare frame – supplied unnumbered, as works spare frames were – was presented to Cecotto by Yamaha together with a quantity of spares, and he completed its assembly himself. Cecotto confirms that it was this machine, on the frame it carries today, that he rode at Imola on 7 October 1979, when he captained the Rest of the World team to victory in the AGV Coppa delle Nazioni, winning all four races he contested against teams that included Kenny Roberts, Randy Mamola, Patrick Pons and Marco Lucchinelli, and setting the fastest lap and the highest average speed of the day (l'Unità, 8 October 1979: 'Cecotto pigliatutto a Imola', copy of this report is offered with the Lot). On 13 April 1980 Cecotto raced the machine once more, winning the Imola 200 ahead of Marco Lucchinelli and Kenny Roberts – his third and final Imola 200 victory; photographs from that meeting are on file. The machine has remained in his ownership ever since and has never been restored: it was recommissioned once, by Domenico Pettinari, for the Monza demonstration of October 2000, after which Pettinari drained and laid it up. The carburettors retain the power-jet system fitted only to Cecotto's works machines; Kenny Roberts' American-run OW31s used different carburettors.

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