Yamaha confirms 'retro' Valencia livery.

To commemorate Yamaha's 50th Anniversary and the end of a brilliantly successful racing year, Yamaha has - as rumoured - decided to compete at this weekend's final round of the 2005 MotoGP World Championship in the company's traditional red, white and black racing colour scheme.

The special Valencia colours - which will replace the usual blue Gauloises livery (middle pic) - follows on from the Yamaha Factory Team's earlier use of the traditional 'Yamaha USA yellow' for the US GP at Laguna Seca (lower pic).

The Valencia livery will thus see the YZR-M1 machines of Valentino Rossi and Colin Edwards sporting the famous red, white and black colours, as seen on many of Yamaha's past factory racing bikes.

In fact in 1975, exactly 30 years ago, Yamaha won its first GP500 world championship with Giacomo Agostini (top pic) riding the then revolutionary two-stroke OW23 YZR500, painted in Yamaha's corporate racing colours.

Yamaha has enjoyed probably its most successful year of racing ever in 2005, winning no less the seven world titles across MotoGP, MX1 and MX2 (Motocross) World Championships.

The Factory Yamaha Team will unveil the special livery today (Thursday), at 17.00, on the Valencia main straight.

Meanwhile, doubts remain as to whether Gauloises will stay as title sponsor with Yamaha next season, but it is believed that the tobacco brand only signed up for 15 of this year's 17 races - so the use of the retro livery this weekend was almost certainly agreed upon long ago.

Also, with the EU wide tobacco advertising ban now in force, Gauloises would have been unable to run their full branding this weekend anyway.