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Duane Brown from BBR was with us last month when his son Carson test-rode the 2022 Yamaha YZ125 for Dirt Bike. Duane and I go way back, and we started talking, like old guys do, about the good old days. One of those days was chronicled in the April, 1996 issue of Dirt Bike. The […]
With rain and wet dirt, we spent most of the holidays cutting new trail and exploring off-road areas around home in So Cal. The only way to do that in the condensed urban areas around here is by dual-sport. Luckily, we just happened to have a 2022 Husqvarna FE501S on hand. By now, most people […]
The 2022 Dakar Rally starts tomorrow. It will be televised nightly on Peacock as follows: Date Coverage Time (ET) Sun., Jan. 2 Stage 1 – Jeddah to Ha’il 8 p.m. Mon., Jan. 3 Stage 2 – Ha’il to Al Artawiyah 8 p.m. Tues., Jan. 4 Stage 3 – Al Artawiyah to Al Qaisumah 8 p.m. […]
We have a 2022 Honda CRF450RX that we’ve been saving for wet weather. As every Southern Californian knows, when the desert is wet it’s a wonderful place to take a big, powerful motorcycle. Basically, they don’t come any bigger and more powerful than the RX. First, we took it to the Blackmore Ranch, where Jeff […]
Right now we are in the midst of choosing the finalists for the 2022 Caselli Cup. This award has a long history, going back to the April 2006 issue when it was billed as “America’s 100 Best Off-Road Riders.” It was never meant to be a Rider of the Year award, but rather a ranking […]
Brandy Richards had a season that most riders can only dream of. In 2021, she won every Women’s Pro race in the WORCS series, just as she had since 2017. She also won every race she attended in the 2021 NGPC series, and she topped it off by winning every day and every single special […]
The 2021 season is in the books and it turned out to be a great year for off-road racing. We had epic battles all over the country and in many cases, championships were decided in the final race. Here’s a look at how some of the most significant race venues ended as well as tentative […]
The 2021 EICMA show in Milan, Italy was a party celebrating the beginning of the end of the weird season of Covid. In the past, we have thought that the end was in sight again and again, but with so much of the world motorcycle industry in one place resuming business, the vibe at EICMA […]
The KTM Factory Editions have been a tradition in the motocross world for over 10 years. These are premium-level motocross bikes that are more or less replicas of the machines ridden by Cooper Webb, Marvin Musquin and the Red Bull KTM Factory motocross team. Now, off-road riders are getting the same treatment. The KTM 350XC-F […]
In the U.S., there are two different 300cc two-strokes that carry the KTM name: the 300XC and the 300XC-W. Up front, the two bikes seem very similar. They both have the most successful motor in KTM history; the 300cc two-stroke. Both have Transfer Port Injection, oil injection and six-speed transmissions. According to KTM’s overall plan, […]
The 2022 250 MX shootout is officially wrapped up. The last item on the list each year is to take them all to Pro Circuit to have them tested on their Dynojet dynamometer. This can provide a few surprises. For the record, the dyno results never play a part in the final outcome. The result […]
The 3 Bros. 24 hours of Glen Helen usually drives all the wildlife out of the hills surrounding Glen Helen raceway. But, each year it does attract one particular pack of coyotes. The Glen Helen Coyotes consist of Dirt Bike videographer Travis Fant with test riders Jared Hicks, Richard Taylor, Sean Lipanovich and Sean Foos. […]
The 2022 Kawasaki KX250 arrived this week, making for a full set of bikes in preparation for our 2022 250 MX shootout. I have a personal attachment to the Kawasaki because I raced the X version of the bike in the 2021 National Grand Prix Championship. The X is virtually the same bike as the […]
This week we got to ride the 2022 GasGas MC250F for the first time. We are preparing for our 2022 250 motocross shootout and we already know the GasGas will do well. It’s unchanged from last year’s model, and that bike was received with surprising approval from everyone who rode it. You wouldn’t think the […]
We have been riding the 2022 Yamaha YZ250 for a couple of weeks and it’s like falling in love with your ex-wife. This is a bike that we all were intimately familiar with but haven’t raced or ridden in a very long time. Other bikes were bigger news and needed testing, so the YZ250 has […]
Back in the late ’90s, motocross looked and sounded very different. Then, in late 1996, Yamaha made an announcement that changed everything. That was when the news came out that Yamaha would be using its one-time exemption to the production rule in order to develop a new four-stroke motocross bike in the course of the […]
VET DES NATIONS: WE’RE THERE! The U.S. attended the Vet des Nations at Farleigh Castle last week with Mike Brown, Doug Dubach, Sean Hamblin and Keith Johnson. They ended up third. Led by Gordon Crockard, Team Northern Ireland scored a narrow victory over Team Wales in the super competitive Evo Team races during the […]
In 2020, KTM’s in-house motocross and Supercross racing program was limited to the 450 class, while Troy Lee handled the 250 team. That all changed when Troy Lee took over the GasGas team for 2021. That meant KTM brought its 250 racing program in-house for Max Vohland. Max had been brought up in the KTM […]
This year’s 250 motocross shootout will come down to a comparison between the new Honda CRF250R and last year’s champion, the Yamaha YZ250F. The other bikes in the contest are unchanged. The Husqvarna, KTM, GasGas, Kawasaki and Suzuki are virtually identical to last year’s models, while the Yamaha has minimal suspension changes as well as […]
Honda’s 2022 CRF450R has been the focus of our testing this week. This bike was the biggest news of last year when it hit. It was bad timing for Honda, however, because much of the final testing was cut short by the Covid-19 shutdown. As a result, the bike arrived with final settings for mapping […]