Drag Race: Hayabusa Dirt Bike vs Stark Varg vs Built KTM 450 On Sand

Any guesses who wins?

14:10

Janaki Jitchotvisut

By: Janaki Jitchotvisut

Sep 3, 2024 at 7:15am ET

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Sand dunes are challenging, and I recently got to experience just how challenging they can be in person (more on that soon). So imagine, if you will, taking a Hayabusa dirt bike to the dunes.

Sounds mad, right? Yet that's exactly what Matt Spears and his buddies did. Together with two friends, they brought the 'Busa, a Stark Varg electric bike, and a race-prepped KTM 450 dirt bike to some dunes in Idaho to do battle.

That 450 KTM, by the way, apparently has "a whole lot of porting and race gas" inside. While they didn't give specifics, it's clear that this bike didn't come to the dunes to make friends. It came to absolutely rip.

But the magnificent thing about EVs of all shapes and sizes is the instant torque. It's right on tap from the drop, meaning that even your slower, nominally less powerful EV is almost always going to get a better start than any piston-powered vehicle that challenges it.

The Hayabusa also has a distinct disadvantage on sand, and that's its sheer weight. It's a heckin chonker of a bike, to use the technical term.

So, that means that it tries to dig into the sand when you start rolling, before the power engages and you start throttling out and pushing it harder.

The 'Busa, as you'll see in this video, is quite good in the sand once it gets going. It's reasonably quick, as it should be with all that power. It's just that it has to get there first.

If you've been watching Spears' Hayabusa videos for a while, you'll note that most of his friends seem a bit intimidated by that bike. And that's fair enough; probably anyone with sense would be if they hadn't ridden it before. Spears has the most experience, so naturally he's going to be the most confident on it.

What do you think?

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But in this video, it's fun to watch a racer (who came with the race-prepped KTM 450, in fact) try to wrap his head around how you pilot the 'Busa around on the sand. It can be done, and he knows it, but it's a very different thing once you're the one at the controls.

I won't tell you who wins, but you probably already know. They do some standing start races, as well as some rolling start races to give the Hayabusa a fighting chance. Honestly, who truly wins is probably all of the people who watch this video.