2021 YAMAHA YZ450F
R I D E R E V I E W
P86
TIME FLIES
Hard to believe, but it's already
been more than three years
since the YZ450F arrived on the
scene as an all-new motorcycle.
At that time, it featured an all-
new motor with electric starting,
a totally revamped frame, and
updated, well, just about every-
thing. But what really got our
attention that year was its new
power-tuning tool, which is es-
sentially something you already
own—your smartphone.
Yamaha broke new ground
when it offered a free app for
your phone that did everything
the previous plug-into-the-engine
GYTR Yamaha Power Tuner did,
but better and a lot cheaper
(more than $200 cheaper, in
fact). You just download the free
Yamaha Power Tuner App, con-
nect it to your bike wirelessly (via
the bike's onboard WiFi system),
and started tuning away. With
the app, you can design your
own personal ignition and fueling
maps for each track you ride,
trade maps with friends and—you
probably didn't even know this—
also download, from Yamaha's
website, the same mapping used
by Justin Barcia to win the Ana-
heim 1 Supercross earlier this
year! How cool is that?
All of this still holds true for
the latest YZ450F, but Yamaha
has taken things one step fur-
ther—your YZ can now look like
Barcia's, too. As usual, Yamaha
offers the YZ450F in two color
schemes, traditional Yamaha
Racing Blue and, instead of the
usual white/red trim, now in
Monster Energy Yamaha Team
colors. Yamaha calls this ver-
sion its "Racing Edition" model
but has no technical advantages
over the standard blue model,
The 2021 YZ450F returns as it was in 2020 but with new clothes.
