The 2026 Yamaha YZ450F has been treating me well this past month. I’ve managed to get out for a few rides with my son and even dragged the bike along to a few test days while working with the riders in my motocross team, Boyd’s Moto Racing. We’re at the stage now where most of the hard work and setup with the team is done as we head into round one of the ProMX series. My time racing ProMX is long behind me, so I’ll only be there in a team role, but I’m definitely taking advantage of the small amount of downtime I have right now to get some riding in myself.

Over the weekend we had the truck set up with a few of my riders racing at Lake Macquarie Motorcycle Club, getting some practice in for round two of the state titles coming up there. Since we were already there, I decided to jump into the vets class and have a ride myself.

The YZ is still completely standard apart from the holeshot button I fitted and a set of Renthal grips to replace the stock ones. In race one I grabbed the holeshot and led every lap to take the win, but race two threw up a strange issue. My holeshot button got clogged with dirt on the start, which meant it couldn’t release and stayed stuck on for the entire race. I still managed to pull another holeshot and get out to a good lead, but riding with the forks locked down for the whole moto felt very odd. Every bump transferred straight into the handlebars and nearly blew my hands off the grips.

For race three I managed to fix the holeshot button issue, but then completely blew the start and spun off the line. That meant I had to make a few quick passes on the first lap to get back to the front and eventually take the lead again.

Overall it was a really good weekend and I had a load of fun spinning laps. I even bumped into an old racer friend I grew up competing with and he mentioned it was the first time he’d ever seen me leave a bike completely stock. My response was that I’m almost afraid to change anything in case I ruin how good the bike already is.

Next month the YZ450F will be due for an oil change and we might even throw a few bits of fruit on it to make it look a little more special. But for now I’ll just keep spinning laps and enjoying it.

Hours: 12

Mods This Month:
Holeshot device
Renthal grips

Mods Next Month:
TBC