When an off-road bike trumps the motocrossers for all the glory, we have to name a motocross BOTY as well. We not so easily picked the Honda CRF450R. Why was rehashing our 450cc shootout winner a tough choice? Because, if you read around, you may feel that Kawasaki has a better motocross bike, according to some experts. What Kawasaki did was pretty smart: It chose the safe route, making an all-new bike that wasn't as radically new as the Honda CRF. By playing it safe, only changing so much, the KX450 and also its 250cc brother are a much easier progression toward where we're going. And where we're going is where the Honda is at right now: Fuel-injected, mass-centralized, aggressive handling, light feeling and styled aggressively for the next few years. The CRF isn't perfect, cite stalling for instance, and you can pick away at any subjective title bestowed upon a bike. But in talking to the clutch-abusing riders, the ones who don't like the handling and have frenzied suspension shops and triple-clamp manufacturers in droves, and even those whose cam decompression weights fell to the belly of the beast, we will admit that that the CRF isn't perfect. But the Honda is the guiding step into the future of where a motocross bike will need to be to be competitive on the track and on the showroom floor, and that is why we chose it as MX BOTY. Plus it is, after all, a really good motocross bike.

Posted with permission from the June 2009 issue of Dirt Rider ® www.dirtrider.com. Copyright 2009, Source Interlink Media, Inc. All rights reserved. For more information about reprints from Dirt Rider, contact Wright's Reprints at 877-652-5295.

See 2009 CRF450R