450's aren't, have never been, and will never be the weapon to take to the fight, unless you are personally better suited to a 4 stroke. And neither are any of the other foopers. The fact is that until the industry began placing all their top purchased humans on 4 strokes out of desperation, almost no one could flog a hippo to any kind of race win.
Up to and including 2005, there was a mix of 2 and 4 stroke machines being ridden by the top stars.
The problem for the powers that be was that this mixture of machine types was making the Flumpers they were trying to hype look pretty bad... Check out the video!
http://www.youtube.com/user/MrMJS1971#p/u/32/dpqnurJcDkcThe Flumper pushers tried to do everything they could to make the 4 strokes look good. They paid the announcers to gush on and on about how great 4 strokes were (Even if they were larding around the track patheticly) at every chance, while only referring to any 2 stroke bike out there kicking major ass as "the honda" or "the suzuki".
The factories tried everything to make sure the right picture was being painted on TV, but in the end nothing was good enough because it's obvious to anyone watching the 2 types of machine compete side by side - WITH COMPARABLE RIDERS ON BOTH TYPES - that the 2 strokes are superior.Having KDub, as the top 4 stroke finisher at the San Diego Supercross in 05, get LAPPED on his CRF450 by a bunch of guys on 250's sure didn't help make 4 strokes look good either...
In the end, the only way for the factories to get what they wanted out of their weekly TV commercial that's supposed to look like a racing series, was to eliminate 2 strokes from the action altogether by making all their wage slaves ride 4 strokes.