You know I just don't buy into that line of thinking. RV won his 250 championship and went to Motocross of Nations on his 250 and swept his moto's against 450's. If you look at the lap times of the 250's, as a group they run slower, which makes sense as they are mostly younger less experience riders. But a bunch of the top riders will post lap times faster than at least half the 450 field. Even now that they are swapping motos. Locally I see 250 2S beat the snot out of 450 riders. I know they are not national caliper pros but they are pros. And IMO I think alot of them could be would be National with adequate funding or backing. And Robby Marshal qualified on a 250 before ( I crash alot Canard) took him out, at that point he was running about 16th. I truly think if a top ten rider spent the time, with the money and backing on a 2S he would be competive. And if the AMA pulled there head out of their arse and the factory's D*&^ out out of there mouth and raced equal displacement or equal HP like every other friggen race series, the 2S would really be competive ( but then what would we **** about )
Ain't ever gonna happen. Only reason four strokes ever took off is because of the advantage they had with DD. Thats how there were sales, thats how there was R&D and thats how they got to where they are today. No DD, no advantage. no advantage, no sales, no sales, no four stonks. Think about it, if it had been equal from the start, would someone have said: You know what? I feel like riding a bike that is extremely unreliable, extremely expensive when the reliability rears its head, much slower, much heavier, much louder, much harder to start, poorer handling just cos I can.
No one. There would have been no incentive to buy them. If you made it equal displacement at the highest level of racing in america, who knows what would happen? Its hard to say. Would all the factories continue to push their 250Fs? Would Yamaha get their two stroke checked out and privateer teams make hay with it? Hard to say. The gap of development between the two and four strokes is huge. Factory 250Fs these days would no doubt be making power very close to a production 250 and making it in a much more usable fashion and range.
My prediction would be that teh factories continued with their 250Fs, maybe some privateers would pick up the 250. Maybe KTM would say, nah f*ck this sh*t, turn around and put musquin on a 250 and lay waste to the next season, maybe he would fall on his face. One things for certain: If this keeps going, the lites class will end up a pure factory backed race because no privateer can afford to compete. So long as its ED for my races, the big five can tear eachother to bits, I don't care. All I want is fair game.
Only reason something similar hasn't happened in the Amatuers, is because everyone is either too ignorant or prideful to go for the 250 when its been shot down by them for all these years, or because they want to be getting some Pro contracts soon and riding a two stroke makes that difficult.