Motocross 450s. Most people have no idea the potential these bikes have just sitting on the stand. Lots of riders never get to ride them and even if they do many don't come close to experiencing the bike to its potential. Most mortals don't have the skill. Still, we all want to know which is the best. Manufacturers strive to build the best motocross bike in this, the premiere class. They place a lot of weight on winning shootouts like this one. They spend millions of dollars racing these bikes to place at the top of the standings. Even more money is spent developing the 450cc motocross machine. You are getting a lot of machine in plenty of ways.
Now, a regular guy, for less than $10,000, can get in at the highest level of motocross. There isn't anything close to this in all of motorized sport. You can't buy a Moto GP bike or a Formula 1 car. NASCAR? Forget it. But in motocross you can get pretty damn close to having the same equipment as your favorite motocross racer. But are these bikes built just for you (or the rider you think you are)? In an effort to answer the question of which bike is the best, Dirt Rider compared the current offerings from Honda, Kawasaki, KTM and Yamaha. Suzuki was not sure of plans for releasing any of its 2010 motocross bikes as we're writing this so the RM-Z is unfortunately missing from our comparison.
How We Tested
Racetown 395, Piru MX, Milestone MX, Perris Raceway, Pala Raceway and Glen Helen motocross tracks all played host to our testing at one time or another. That range of tracks goes from fast and loamy to hard-packed, slippery and tight. It included straight-up outdoor nastiness and some sculpted jump-tracks, too. We raced some of the bikes individually and then raced them all against each other during our main shootout day at Racetown 395, where we got some very comparable lap times. On that day we also ran the bikes in front of a radar gun with brand-new Bridgestone 403/404 tire combos on all the bikes. They are great tires that leave the question of traction out of the discussion. Along with the great looking RidePG.com number plate backgrounds these bikes are a few oil changes and air filter cleanings into their life cycles but that's it. Each bike started our comparison with approximately 15-20 hours of runtime, though our Honda was released a little late to us and was playing catch-up with a seven hour deficit on the meter.