Yamaha’s 2017 WR450F Rally

Yamaha has revealed the latest version of the WR450F Rally that will compete in next year’s Dakar Rally.

The bike will be ridden by Helder Rodriguez, Adrien van Beveren, Alessandro Botturi and Rodney Fagotter. The Dakar starts on 2 January from Asuncíon in Paraguay before continuing through Bolivia and ending into Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Based on the WR450F enduro bike, the Rally model gets a bigger, 33-litre fuel tank and an upgraded cooling system. Appearance-wise, the high screen and four LED headlights are similar to the T7 concept. It’s a setup expected to grace the Tenere 700 later in 2017.

Yamaha is also apparently developing a customer kit to allow existing European WR450 owners to convert their bikes to WR450F Rally spec. We don’t know if the kit will be available in Australia.