Human Impression Suspension
This chart shows where each bike shines in the squish and bounce departments. You can see the Yamaha and KTM stay in the high "Excellent" range the longest while the Honda has more of a bias to the smaller bumps. Kawasaki is consistently strong. Suzuki never gets all that bad, but by comparison it suffers
Lap Times
The KTM is the fastest bike, on average, out of the entire lineup of 2009 450 MX bikes. Obviously their attention to suspension performance paid off this year with more riders going fast on orange. Our motos were limited by time with four-lap sprints for the Pros and three-lap sessions for Novice/Intermediates.
Sound Test
This chart only shows one thing: how easy it is to tune a muffler to sound test rpm. Our bikes were tested with approximately 20 hours of run time on them.
Real World Sound
Loud bikes shut down tracks. It's that simple. The Kawasaki is clearly the loudest on the track, followed by the Honda and Suzuki, which are essentially tied. The Yamaha and KTM are the only quiet bikes in this comparison and they deserve credit for building competitive, intelligent bikes for competitive, intelligent people.
3rd Gear Roll-On
This is the radar dyno test. It measures the bikes' acceleration from barely chugging in 3rd gear to the rev limiter and displays it honestly despite what we think we feel. You can see why the Kawasaki is often referred to as intensely powerful in the mid. It stays on top of the field for a while. Considering it starts equal to the others, its rise of acceleration is often too sharp and less efficient. The Honda delivers a better overall power style with the Yamaha suffering just before the midrange (at 30 mph) but then coming on strong. KTM is pretty much a straight line: the most linear delivery by far.
Acceleration Test
This is a motocross start. Who gets the holeshot? That depends on who gets the most traction and who delivers the best type of power to the ground. KTM is head and shoulders above the rest with Yamaha also outperforming the EFI bikes in the test with unbeatable traction from 0-10 mph and then staying right there with impressive consistency.
Top Speed
This is as fast as these bikes can go. It's cool to look at, but not totally useful for the real world. The KTM would likely clean up on the other bikes if it had another gear Honda's got some game.