With two races under my belt on a DRZ dual-sport motorcycle, I figured it was time to step up to a "real" dirt bike. With some reluctance, I bid farewell to my beloved DRZ400SM, and found a 2018 Yamaha YZ250F to replace it with. The bike's motor, clutch, and suspension had been rebuilt, so I felt confident about buying what would otherwise be a fairly well-used motorcycle. It came with a spare 18" wheel also, so I figured it wouldn't be too bad in the woods despite being built for motocross.
I got one ride on the bike before the race and a crash-course on using the kick-start. Naturally, though, the bike was a bit hesitant to start when the green flag waived, so I started the race by giving the rest of my heat about a 30 second head-start.
Once in the woods, the bike felt in its element. I'll want to soften the suspension for the next event, but otherwise it wasn't too hard to handle.
My main focus was on keeping the bike running, since a stall would mean another round of kick-starting the bike. I was relatively lucky in maintaining this effort until a backup on the trail. A panic stab of the rear brake when I was following closely caused the bike to stall. Making matters worse, my friend Lory was also following closely behind the slower rider, so he slammed into me when I came to a halt. We were tangled for a moment, but eventually separated his brake rotor from my rear sprocket.
With a push of a button, he was off again, while I took a few deep breaths of air before kicking the bike back to life. After this, I was pretty gassed, with fogged goggles to boot.
From that point on it seemed like one stall after another. At one point, a bystander tried to help me kick-start the bike after seeing me wrestle with it for a while. I got it going each time, but at a deficit to my energy level and time.
Despite the setbacks, I finished in 7th place [in a class of 13 riders]. Given that the setbacks were mechanical in nature, I'm happy with the result. I'll be installing a Rekluse Clutch before my next race as well as turning a few clicks out on the compression damper to see what effect that will have.
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