We’re going to stick with our viewpoint, but deliver a caveat. Despite denials from the yellow faithful, we are equally as adamant, Ski-Doo, in the past decade or so, has not delivered number one rated handling prowess.

A giant shift occurred in model year 2025 with a complete redesign of the front steering and suspension with the new RAS RX front end.

By raising the sled’s roll center and keeping its center of gravity low, the engineers have allowed the chassis to have less leverage on the skis, to corner flatter and reduce inside ski lift when cornering at speed. The changes have also made the turning arc of the sled more linear and predictable to steering inputs over rough terrain.

Roll Center refers to the imaginary point at the front of a snowmobile’s chassis (between the skis) where the inputs from the skis and suspension intersect as the sled cycles through its suspension movement or steers through corners. If it’s too low, you get ski-lift, body roll and imprecise handling.

Ski-Doo raised the roll center on RAS RX adding completely new castings that have lengthened the distance between the A-arm attachment points and the distance between the lower A-arm and the ski saddle. This longer spindle raises the front of the sled slightly and has much to do with raising the roll center.

Besides the longer spindle, the ski’s pivot bolt has been moved backward a bit resulting in a steeper steering angle. This makes the sled much “quicker steering” or responsive to the driver’s feeding of input into the handlebars.

Other changes to the swaybar, shock angles and the addition of new curved upper and lower wishbones helps the RAS-RX deal with bumps better and particularly, the curved A-arms help deliver increased useable travel.

Does all this work and actually make a tangible difference? You bet it does. Our test riders are sold on RAS RX and unanimously, very impressed.

In TEST RIDE Luke lights up the trail aboard the highly-anticipated 2025 Polaris Indy XCR featuring the race proven Patriot 9R engine.

Then Luke dives into FXR’s line of snowmobiling products and the innovative technologies that have set the company apart from its competition over the years.

AJ walks through installing the all new Ski-Doo RAS RX front suspension upgrade kit onto a 2024 MXZ-X and showcases the dramatic improvements to on-trail handling that owners of 2023 and 2024 model year Ski-Doos can expect with this kit.

Then, Luke hits the trail aboard the 2025 Ski-Doo Backcountry XRS 850 TurboR featuring the new 43-inch wide front end and highlights how this wider, more trail-focused front improves handling during on-trail riding.

While the name-change amounts to just one more letter in an already full bowl of alphabet soup, this latest front end revamp is hands down, running away, the most significant massaging of the Ski-Doo G5 platform.

We’ve held nothing back here at World Headquarters when it comes to our feelings on the RAS and RAS X IFS and its response to turning inputs and bump control. Year after year we’ve anointed Polaris’ IFS as both the handling leader and the most controlled IFS in bumps because it’s a fact that nothing goes through gnarly terrain or holds a stronger line through the twisties. Nuff said.

Conversely, Ski-Doo has owned the rear suspension compliance award since 2011 when rMotion was introduced. To this day it remains fully in command of that well-deserved reputation. However, the RAS IFS dating back to the late 00’s has never kept pace with rMotion. RAS continually delivered a “segmented” response in tight, fast turns. The sled never felt settled and most certainly did not provide rider confidence to feed more throttle after planting the outside ski.

In contrast Polaris’ IFS would beg riders for more throttle in turns while providing intuitive, initial turn-in and a firmly planted feel out of the turn’s exit.

For MY25 Ski-Doo’s raised roll center RAS RX IFS responds virtually identically to the Polaris setup. Go ahead, carry more speed toward the apex, drag the brake slightly on corner entry, let the tail gently swing out and serve as your signal to squeeze in more power from the center of the turn to corner exit.

You’ll scratch your helmet when you first experience this response but I’m telling you one thing that’s boiler plate – you’ll never be satisfied with your current G4’s or G5’s handling after sampling RAS RX.

Our only question is why didn’t Ski-Doo do this geometric tweak sooner?