Riding the SX Open night 1 track made me realize how much the class bikes handle differently. After riding the track on the 125 and 250f for almost the whole time, I did a race on the 450f just to see. I noticed differences right away, but besides the braking and next to no engine braking at all (it feels like), it seemed to handle so much better in sections. They track so straight while braking (assuming this is solely because of having next to no engine braking compared to the other bikes). The place I noticed the biggest difference was the small whoop section after going under the tunnel, going inside and jumping off the roller into the section, then bouncing off the whoops out. On the smaller bikes I would get all out of shape and the bike would bounce everywhere and just handle poorly. I could get through the section cleanly on those bikes, but I would have to land perfectly in order to do so. On the 450f the bike just didn't have weird bounces, it tracked straight and wanted to keep going straight and stay upright.
Is this because of the bike's weight, or because of the different power characteristics (or both)? I've read tests on the KTM 125 vs 150 and they said the 125 handled better even though the chassis are virtually identical, but it felt better over the 150 because of the power delivery (torque and whatnot). Would this be the cause? I'm not entirely sure on how the suspension is setup on the 450's compared to the other bikes, but I couldn't believe how much better the bike handled in situations like that (made it so much easier to ride imo). This whole time I'm trying to adjust every aspect of my setup to fix things like this, and a 450 does it automatically.
I was talking to Peter about it, and he said the same thing. He could barely ride the 250f on that track so he was riding a 450.
