VOL. 55 ISSUE 43 OCTOBER 30, 2018 P87
a bit of a known quantity. In su-
permoto guise, you use far more
of the engine's top-end than at
the motocross track, and this is
an area the FS simply kicks ass.
The FS 450 charges through the
bottom and midrange so quickly
you're into the top-end before
you know it, the motorcycle still
pulling like a train before you
need to hit those brilliantly pow-
erful Brembo anchors.
There's two different modes
on the FS 450, one with a harder
bottom-end kick to lurch you out
of corners, and a softer map
with more midrange, and after a
couple of sessions, I found the
latter map to be the most ideal,
simply because there's only three
slow corners at Adams with most
of your lap spent in the midrange
or higher.
Having traction control is a
handy edition for many riders
but I suspect after getting used
to the way the FS 450 operates,
most will turn it off. Regardless,
it's a very unobtrusive system and
doesn't affect how you slide into
corners, just how much you slide
out of them.
On the brakes, the WP AER48
air fork has superb balance and
allows you to point the chassis
almost wherever you like, making
changing lines at the last minute
a given if you're on the wrong
trajectory. Then, it's just a matter
of slamming on that throttle and
blasting out of the corner, con-
necting them like a game of join
the dots via the Pro Taper bar.
