We Ride Luke Clout’s Penrite Honda CRF250R

Australian Weapon

When you are invited to spin some laps on an elite race bike, the first three words out of your mouth should always be, “where and when?” The Penrite Honda team has long been a force down under, but for 2020 Yarrive Konsky’s Australian race team expanded to the United States to contest the Western Regional 250 Supercross Championship with riders Luke Clout and American Mitchell Oldenberg. Currently, Clout and Oldenberg sit seventh and 10th in the point standings, respectively, and both are anxious to return to action and finish out the season strong when racing resumes in Salt Lake City in a couple of weeks.

With plenty of time to kill during the COVID-19 quarantine, Jamie Ellis of Twisted Development reached out and offered up a test ride on Clout’s number-101 Honda CRF250R race bike. Twisted Development handles the engine builds for the team and also provides them a race shop to work out of in its Murietta, CA, headquarters. Prepared by Clout’s brother Aaron, the Penrite Honda CRF250R is a thing of beauty and it was almost a shame to turn our test rider Alex Ray loose on it! Ellis and the Clout brothers met us at the Viney Family SX track in SoCal and let us have our way with the bike for an afternoon, and it was certainly a day to remember!

Luke Clout was on hand spinning some practice laps on a Honda CRF450R, and he an ARay traded off a few times and compared notes on bike setup and performance. As he always does on bikes smaller than 450cc, Ray looked great on Clout’s machine and it made us question his choice to race in the 450 class. At the end of the day, he was thoroughly impressed with Clout’s machine and the two sat down to discuss…