OK, so this is the first two-stroke motocross bike we’ve tested on ‘Billy’s Bikes’ and we’ve skipped the rest and gone straight to the best, perhaps? It’s lighter, quicker and cheaper to run than their big booming expensive four-strokes that have dominated the motocross tracks for almost a decade. So why has KTM thrown money at the development of this bike when everyone is buying into four-strokes then, what were they thinking?

Words by Clinton Piechart:

I'm actually lost for words, for the first time in my life my wife would add. Two issues ago I came back from testing all the leading RRs in the different championships around the world and my conclusion then was that they were all fantastic but the one that stood out head and shoulders above the rest was Barrier’s World Superbike. Not from a power point of view but rather from its user friendliness and the perceived control I seemed to feel I had over the bike. I've now ridden the latest incarnation from BMW, the fourth version of the bike they launched in 2009 (if you count the HP4) and I've come away speechless because BMW has actually tried to copy his (Barrier’s) bike. Even though the bike is 4hp stronger and 4kg lighter than its predecessor it has not become more of a knife's edge to ride, but rather it’s become easier and more controllable to ride. The grey area between where the electronics start helping you and where you think you are a fantastic rider get blurred quite quickly and you’re not sure where the one has let off and the other is taking over, it’s so seamless, so surreal.

Yes, the famous space invaders, James Tiberius Kirk and the solemn pointy-eared Spock couldn’t be more specific with my take on their famous chin-rubbing phrase. Well actually it was – ‘It’s life Jim, but not as we know it’, if you haven’t a clue what I’m on about. And if you’ve never seen any Star Trek episodes/movies, and have no idea what I’m on about, then you have to have been born in a wet cave living off spongy moss, irritating insects and the odd stabbed rat, right?