Johnny Cecotto

The best day for me in my racing career, on both two wheels and four, was, without doubt, the day on which I won my first World Championship race.

I came to Europe from competing in the South American Championship and was racing for the Yamaha team of the Venezuelan Yamaha importer: Venemotos, under the management of Andres Ippolito.

I was 19 years old and it was my first time in Europe. We came up just to have a try, do a few races, get the feel of the World Championship.

As a warm-up to this, I had been to Daytona for a 750cc race on the way. I was third fastest in qualifying there. But I hit trouble before the race. Just before the start, when we were on the grid, my bike had a problem, which proved to be a small oil leak. I could do nothing as they pushed me off the grid.

I was allowed to start the race, but only if I started from the back of the grid, in about 80th position. And, to make this worse, they started us in groups of 40 bikes.

What made the race fun was that I climbed all the way up to third, just in front of Giacomo Agostini...

Then we went to Italy and did a few races there, mainly in the 750cc class. This was my testing, really.

We arrived at Paul Ricard for the French Grand Prix meeting in April. And everything was really big league, with a massive crowd of 120,000 spectators. I was running in both the 250cc and 350cc races, starting with the 250cc event.

It was my first visit to the track, so I had to learn my way around. Also, it was my first ever race on a 250cc bike. And I had to race against the works teams, too, with riders like World Champion Walter Villa for Harley Davidson and Ituikugiro Takai for Yamaha.

Still, Villa retired on the first lap and I realised I had a chance against Takai. His bike was much faster than mine in a straight line, but I would sit in his slipstream and then hang on around the corners.

I wasn't sure how to make my move, but I dived past on the inside of him, under braking at the end of the Mistral Straight on the last lap. It was quite a risk, and my bike went very sideways. But I held it. Takai fought back, though, and I had to try everything to keep him behind me around Signes, just a few corners before the flag. Then he made a mistake and I managed to stay ahead, to win by 2 seconds.

The rest of the riders were a long, long way behind. I think Michel Rougerie was third on his works Harley Davidson, and then Patrick Pons on his works Yamaha.

That was amazing, and really gave me confidence for the 350cc race. However, this was against Agostini, and on his favourite type of bike.

After a good practice, which gave me a lot of confidence, I started from the front row, in either second or third position. We reckoned that from there we had good potential and I could have good results.

I made a very good start. Believe it or not, I jumped into the lead and was never overtaken. Agostini never caught me. It was quite easy, actually... In fact, I had Christian Huguet come up alongside at the start, from the fourth row, but he couldn't do anything and was a long way back at the end of the first lap.

There had been some trouble for the others, though, on the opening lap, because Australian rider John Dodds collided with Rudi Keller, breaking his leg, while Keller slipped back across the track in front of many of the others, holding them up a bit.

Agostini wasn't fast at the start, which surprised me, apparently running back in fourth place, but he came after me. He closed to within about three seconds early on, but I just went faster again and, honestly, he couldn't do anything about me. I stayed in front, winning by 25 seconds, which shocked a lot of people. Many people hadn't even heard of me, I think...

Winning these races was strange, though, especially the 350cc race, as I left the circuit not really knowing any more about my opponents. I really hadn't seen that much of them...

What makes the win so strong in my mind is not that it was a race with overtaking all the time, but that we hadn't expected to be able to come to Europe and start winning straight away.

Before we came to Europe, Ippolito and I hadn't decided what our programme was going to be, which races we would do. However, after that weekend at Paul Ricard, we thought 'Hey, this is good. Let's stay and try to do the complete season...' This proved to be a financial problem, but the results from Paul Ricard made good news at home in Venezuela and this helped raise some more sponsorship money.

By the end of the season, I was a World Champion, as I had won the 350cc title. In the 250cc championship, however, I wasn't so successful. Four times I was in the lead and had my engine blow up. For me, that was not good. But that weekend at Paul Ricard was the start of something great. It meant a lot to me.