For close to a decade the Australian Desert race scene has been pretty much dominated by big-bore four-strokes. I know a 450cc four-stroke has pipped them on a few occasions, but not many. For example, since 2014 arguably the biggest desert race in Australia, - the Finke Desert Race — has been dominated and won by big bore four-strokes. Even Yamaha thought you needed to be on a big bore thumper at Finke as they built the late King of the Desert, Daymon Stokie, a WR500F as his winning machine.
Considering the trend of bigbore, thumper domination, the Australian desert does not seem to be changing in a hurry. I took the chance at Sherco’s 2023 enduro model launch to ride their 500 SEF Factory with the mindset
