VOL. 48 ISSUE 44 DECEMBER 13, 2011
P63
VS. YAMAHA YZ250F
BY THE CYCLE NEWS STAFF
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIT PALMER
W
G Fs
62-74 Shootout.indd 63
e have a winner. It took a while, but
after bouncing around from track to
track and putting in as many laps as
we could on each bike the past few weeks,
we finally have a victor in our 2012 250F Motocross Shootout. And, much to our surprise,
it really wasn't overly difficult to come to a
conclusion. As good and as evenly matched
as these bikes are, one stood above the rest.
Cutting straight to the chase, all but one of
our testers chose the Honda CRF250R as
their top choice of the five bikes in this comparison: the 2012 Honda CRF250R, Kawasaki KX250F, KTM 250 SX-F, Suzuki RMZ250 and Yamaha YZ250F.
In a nutshell, our shootout boiled down to
three bikes – the Honda, Kawasaki and Suzuki – with those three standing on our 2012
250F MX Shootout podium. But deciding
in what order was a bit more difficult. Still, it
wasn't the struggle it normally is.
Our shootout basically had one rule: All the
bikes had to be ridden in stock condition, exactly how you'd get yours off the showroom
floor. We ran the original tires on all the bikes
and chose not to remap any of those with fuel
injection. Except for with the Suzuki, fiddling
with mapping can be time consuming. It's too
easy to find yourself spending the entire day
on one bike going back and forth from one
setting to the other, so we just rode 'em how
we got 'em.
You might notice that the Husqvarna TC250
is missing from our shootout. Since the bike
improves by leaps and bounds every year,
we were looking forward to including the TC.
But Husqvarna couldn't supply us with a bike
in a timely matter, so we had to move on without it. However, we did ride one a few weeks
ago, and you can read about it in a previous
issue of Cycle News by clicking here: 2012
Husqvarna TC250 http://cyclenews.coverleaf.com/cyclenews/20111025#pg43
So here we go…
12/9/11 3:19 PM
