WHY THE WR-F?
The team has been racing YZ450Fs
at Finke but it makes sense that they
run the biggest-selling 450 enduro
bike in Oz in an off-road race. The
previous model didn’t have the power
characteristics to match the reverse
cylinder in the YZ-F, but the 2016
WR-F is every bit the modern bike
with very few compromises made.
But the only real way to fi nd out if the
bike is up to task is to take it to the
track and put it through its paces.
The team loved the 2015 YZ450F
— it was a brilliant Finke bike. The
team had three years developing and
racing that bike and found one of its
greatest attributes was that it was
easy to get solid top-end power out
of the engine. The 2015 race bike
was taken to Alice Springs to offer
a baseline of where the team was at
and where they could go from there.
There was some work to do because
both Josh and Beau loved their 2015
YZ-Fs and the team isn’t about to
take a step backwards.
I’ve never watched testing at this
level up close and seeing it done on
that track just adds to the intensity.
The boys would be sent out with
settings they know they won’t like
and asked to ride as fast as they can
on one of the most dangerous tracks
in the world to get an idea of whether
one thing they may have never tried