While the RUSH is still young in terms of its production lifespan, we think Polaris is itching to get a Direct Injection system to the market to counter fuel economy leadership owned by Ski-Doo.

Polaris has done an exceptional job tweaking its Cleanfire system on the 600 and 800 Liberty twins over the past couple seasons.

In particular, is the amazing oil mileage the semi-direct injection Liberty 800 produces, which is virtually the same as the E-TEC 800.

We’re thinking Polaris might make 2013 an engine technology year.

While the good old pre-nineties days were all about cross-country and roundy-round racing, the last decade has been focused mainly on snocross and variations of freestyle and hillcross racing.

The following is the story of the ups, downs and upside-downs the Supertrax team went through competing in the 2008 USCC Red Lake I-500, a race with more than 40 years of rich history.

Normal USCC Rules don’t allow more than one rider per sled, however, due to the nature of this joint event, Arctic Cat and the USCC organization allowed media teams to sub-off riders for each loop to allow more editors to experience cross-country racing. Team Supertrax consisted of test riders Jordan Elliott, Luke Lester and me, AJ Lester.

With our well-bolstered egos pumped and ready to race, we thought this cross-country thing would be just another fast paced trail ride with a few high speed road jumps (also referred to as “approaches”, if you’re from Minnesota). With the race now behind us, all we can say is – wow! Were we ever wrong!

Under normal USCC racing classifications the F5 would fall into the Sport 85 class for sleds under 85 horsepower. You can enter a stock F5 with a few safety mods, but it’s not a bad idea to do some preventative maintenance, given a 500 mile race can be hard on equipment.

Our F5 received the royal treatment including Fox Floats up front and a rear Fox IFP shock. A 190-pound front arm spring plus 102 Stud Boy studs and 9-inch carbide shaper bars were added along with a few other Arctic Cat goodies to keep things strapped down and running smoothly.

From a consumer standpoint this easy upgrade amounts to a basic race package – well worth the money, for track or trail. If you’re on a tight budget, the F5 suspension could be left stock and set to the stiffest settings.

While a stock, baseline F5 was the right choice for Arctic Cat to begin with, a Sno-Pro would be a better choice for a first time racer as the suspension is already premium equipped.

During the prep times allotted each day and prior to the event, Black Magic Racing and the ace mechanics at Arctic Cat gave the F’s their final tuning touches and repaired the sleds as needed. Yes, repairs were needed.

Friday morning I was ready to go and pumped to see what kind of times I could run against the veterans of the sport. The air was crisp enough to freeze your eyelids shut and the bitter cold held the sweet scent of 2-stroke adrenaline.

As I pulled up to the line, my adrenaline was pumping and I was ready to ride the wheels off the minty-fresh F5. Things started out great running high speeds through the ditches – attempting not to catch a frozen drift at 85mph. After a half hour I started to get the feel for the ditches and really enjoyed running the high speeds.

I was starting to pass a few people, then a few more. I figured I was making pretty good time. The ditch run soon poured out onto a large river section – wide on the straightaways and tight in the corners.

The F5 was running strong, however, the 600 class sleds I was running down had more go on the straight sections forcing me to drive deeper into the corners and hold more speed through the turns, hanging myself off the inside of the sled like an acrobat.

The river section seemed to last forever when finally I entered the gas stop. USCC rules state you must come to a complete stop, get off the sled, then run beside it to reach your team. After an hour of minus fifty wind chill and hard riding, running isn’t as easy as you think!

I got the fuel topped off and turned out we had made up more than five minutes and passed a herd of sleds. As I left the gas stop I had a renewed energy to go harder and faster. That’s where everything went sideways.

About ten miles from the finish of the day’s race and a good 45 minutes after the fuel stop, I was running down the side of farmers’ fields at 80-plus mph, hitting road approaches with blistering speed and telling myself that I just needed to go a little faster to make up a little more time, push a bit harder.

The racer in me took over and I was running the F5 as fast as the little liquid cooled mill would chug. It was at that moment I realized a few of the drifts I was hitting were harder than others I had hit earlier in the day.

I was carrying well over 80mph when it all went wrong. The sled contacted a rock solid drift only four or five inches high and sent the front end vertical and slightly crooked. I held the throttle on hoping it would straighten out but, unfortunately, there weren’t any more ponies on tap to pull the little F out of the inevitable tank slappers I was about to experience.

From that point forward it was flashes of white, black and green – upside down and backwards. By Grace alone I didn’t get tangled up with the sled and managed to find my way to my feet after a moment of heaving to catch the wind that had been beaten out of me.

Running close behind was a semi-pro racer who stopped and asked if I was okay. He told me my get-off was the gnarliest crash he had ever seen.

As I stood in the middle of a farmers’ field in Northern Minnesota with a twisted pile of F5, tunnel severely bent, and plastic broken, I realized there’s a lot more to cross country racing than I had imagined. Although pain was setting in I was having some of the most fun I had ever had on a snowmobile.

We managed to limp the F5 home and, miraculously, the Arctic Cat engineers, along with Cat’s Joey Halstrom, Jordan and myself pieced the sled back together using a block and tackle, loads of zip ties and some 100mph duct tape.

Day 2 brought the same frigid weather with the addition of light winds helping to scatter snow dust at every corner. Jordan took over the controls this day and proved himself a cross country rider.

At the pit stop Jordan was doing great and Luke and I were able to fuel the sled and get him a new set of goggles. As he left the pit another sled entered with a glowing red brake rotor. As the crew’s fuel splashed over the edge of the tank it hit the rotor and flames jumped out, quickly engulfing the sled.

To my amazement the racers, pit crew and onlookers were quick to act, grabbing a fire extinguisher to douse the flames while moving gas cans further away to avoid a larger problem. The incident was handled like only a top-class race sanctioning body could, leaving no one hurt and the sled able to continue with only slightly burnt styling.

Near the end of the day, Jordan was running hard, pushing his last ounce of energy when he bobbled and came off the sled, getting his boot caught in the left footrest allowing the sled to drag him a hundred yards or so until he could get untangled and remount.

By day’s end, Jordan finished incredibly well with the sled showing nothing more than minor bruises.

Day 3 was Luke’s turn in the saddle and he ran strong right from the get-go. My earlier get-off had set us back too far to catch up to the other teams, but Luke knew that we needed to finish the race to prove we could do it.

Running fast and clean he didn’t make any big mistakes and ran at speeds above and beyond anyone in our class, proving that with age comes wisdom.

At the end of three days the F5 was looking a little rough – thanks mostly to my get-off. Other than a few cracks and scars, though, it handled the race amazingly well.

This is an event nearly 50 percent of the entrants do not finish over a route that owns comparable prominence in the snowmobile industry to what the Baja 1000 does in off-road racing.

If there was ever a race capable of testing both man and snowmobile, taking both to their physical limit for three consecutive days, it’s the I-500.

* See also: F5 RESURRECTION

Ski-Doo’s early order Spring Break program saw a huge move to models only available with rMotion – when purchased early.

Get this straight: If you want an rMotion in-season this year you’re going to have to find a dealer who had a cancelled early order and odds are slim you’ll be successful.

Here’s what will bug you if you missed getting a copy – the ability to adjust preload (let alone compression damping) from outside the skid on the running board.

This is so sweet you’ll want rMotion for this adjustment feature alone. Clearly, the time has come for rider-friendly suspension adjustment.

rMotion opens the door on a whole new world of trail dictated tweaking.

At the same time, don’t be too disappointed if low inventory means settling for an SC-5 though. Frankly, we think SC-5 is one of the best rear ends in the biz.

– Click here for 2012 SKI-DOO MXZ X 800R specs

In early October we received a press release from the Yamaha camp stating that the Board of Directors of Yamaha Motor Co in Japan had decided to transfer all shares of Yamaha Motor Canada Ltd. to its American subsidiary.

This immediately prompted a flood of panicky emails to our inboxes from die-hard Yamaha owners questioning whether they’d be able to find a dealer inside of Canada any longer.

The announcement may have seemed fairly rigid and admittedly caught us off guard too so we decided to do some digging to get the necessary clarification.

After speaking with our sources at YMCA, we have uncovered the truth behind the announcement.

Turns out this is decision to transfer shares is simply to satisfy accounting and will have no affect on the outward function of the distributors on either side of the border.

Yamaha Japan continues to own both North American distributors (Canada and US) and the President in Canada still reports to the acting President right across the border.

We’ll continue to keep an eye on the topic, but are confident this announcement was nothing more than protocol to keep shareholders in the loop.

Supertrax Cross-Country Sled Resurfaces In Most Unlikely Location

During the 2008 snowmobile season, Supertrax International ran a feature story about a 3-man team from Supertrax that was invited by Arctic Cat to run the USCC Red Lake I-500 cross-country endurance race aboard brand new Arctic Cat F5’s.

The team consisted of now SnowTrax Television Co-Hosts Luke and AJ Lester and a good friend of Supertrax – Jordan Elliott.

The race carried over a 3-day period and the plan was to have each lad race one full day with AJ taking the first, then Jordan, followed by Luke. Although each was a seasoned snowcross racer in the Canadian Snowcross Racing Association, this would mark their first cross-country event.

Day one got off to a blazing start with AJ way out in front, but with only 10 miles to go to the day one checkpoint, AJ hit a rock solid drift at about 80 miles-per-hour that sent him flying and the sled tumbling over and over and over again until it finally rested in a mangled heap.

AJ recalls, “Running close behind was a semi-pro racer who stopped and asked if I was okay. He told me my get-off was the gnarliest crash he had ever seen.”

AJ walked away from the crash and with the help of the Arctic Cat engineers in his pit, along with Cat’s Joey Halstrom, the guys pieced the sled back together well enough to finish all three days of the race.

This past summer at Arctic Cat’s 50th Anniversary celebration in Thief River Falls, as we strolled through the local arena admiring the vintage displays, we came across AJ’s sled from this very race.

It was either a replica or someone had recovered the wreckage and done a complete restoration of it. Everything looked out-of-the-box new right down to the 4-Eh number plate decals. Resting on the seat was a laminated copy of the article from Supertrax Magazine.

Its humbling to us that this article meant enough to someone to take the time not only restore this sled, but include it as part of Arctic Cat’s rich history on display at the event.

We’ll be re-posting this article in its entirety on this website soon along with the full color images from the race.

Stay tuned!