VOL. 50 ISSUE 1 JANUARY 8, 2013
P61
F VS. SUZUKI RM-Z250 VS. YAMAHA YZ250F
BY THE CYCLE NEWS STAFF
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT PALMER
S
ome years are easy, some not so much. This
was a not-so-easy year.
The race for top honors in our 2013 250F
motocross shootout was a close battle right to the
end, unlike last year when one bike pretty much led
it from wire to wire, making our job that much simpler. This one, however, boiled down to a four-bike
scrap, but one bike did eventually prevail without
too much of a debate from our trusty gang of test
riders.
As always, we gathered up all the usual suspects
of the 250F class but with one new challenger added to the mix – the Husqvarna TC250. After some
significant changes and updates over the past few
years, the Husky is now a legitimate player in the
250F class, so we were quite excited to add the
TC250 into the running.
Again per usual, we visited a variety of tracks in
the So Cal area to conduct our comparison test
and, once again, our one simple rule was kept in
place – all the bikes were to remain stock, stock,
stock, exactly how you'd get them right off the
showroom floor. We even ran the original tires,
handlebars and grips on all the bikes and, in order
to save time, chose not to remap any of the five of
the six bikes that are fuel injected. Mapping can
get quite involved and time consuming, so we just
rode 'em how we got 'em.
Here's what we found out…