he most memorable thing about the 2004 AMA/Chevy Trucks Pro Motocross Championship was the sheer dominance in both classes by transcendent talents. Ricky Carmichael won every moto in the 250 class aboard a Honda CRF450R for the second perfect season in his career, while in the 125 class, Kawasaki’s James Stewart went 23 for 24 in moto wins, a first-turn crash at RedBud in July costing him a first career perfect season. As a result of that dual dominance, by the time the series reached its white-flag race at Steel City Raceway in Delmont, Pennsylvania, the series championships had already been claimed.
However, Stewart still had something to race for. In three years of 125cc racing, he had won 26 of the 29 races he’d entered to that point, tying him with Carmichael for the all-time class record. Stewart’s three 125 national losses over the course of 2002-’04 all came due to misfortune: he lost High Point ’02 after hurting his knee, Southwick ’02 with a blown engine, and RedBud ’04 due to the aforementioned crash. Given the way he dominated, it’s hard not to consider James Stewart the most dominant 125cc motocrosser in history.
Steel City ’04 went much the same way for Bubba as the rest of his 125cc races: he got out front early and simply disappeared from the rest of the field, most of whom were aboard 250F four-stroke machinery. As a matter of fact, Stewart was the only rider in the top ten racing a 125cc motorcycle. To that point in professional racing, 250F riders had only won a total of three 125 nationals, and all were Yamahas: Larry Ward at RedBud ’01, Chad Reed at High Point ’02, and Mike Brown at RedBud ’04. They may have become the preferred bike for the 125 class at that point, but wins were few and far between.
The ’04 Steel City race was historic in the moment. Stewart smashed Ricky Carmichael’s record for 125cc National wins at the same track where Carmichael had broken Mark Barnett’s standing record of 25 wins three years earlier. In typical Bubba bravado, he told Cycle News, “The hardest part about my weekend was getting out of Florida,” referring to Hurricane Francis back home. “I was almost thinking of staying home and trying to break the record at Glen Helen [next week]. I’ve pretty much done everything that can be done on a 125, [like] winning 17 of the last 19 races.”
The Steel City 125 win became a bigger milestone in the evolution of motocross one week later. That’s because Stewart finally relented to Kawasaki’s wishes to race on their new KX250F. Up to that point, Stewart had refused to even try the bike, preferring his #259 KX125. But with the title long ago wrapped up and the all-time record now his, he decided to switch to the thumper for the Glen Helen finale. After just one practice there, Kawasaki team manager Bruce Stjernstrom knew James was going to win.
“He came in and said, ‘This isn’t fair—this is like cheating!’” Stjernstrom remembers. Indeed, Stewart laid waste to the field in what would be his last 125-class race, as well as Kawasaki’s first outdoor win with the KX250F. What no one could have known at the time was that Stewart’s win the previous weekend at Steel City would be the last in AMA Pro Motocross competition for any 125cc motorcycle, either outdoors or in AMA Supercross. Stewart’s record-breaking win would go down in history as the last win ever for the once-mighty one-two-five. 