James Stewart's Championship Kawasaki KX125 Two Stroke - Motocross Action Magazine

[Music] uh [Music] lead with just three laps to go stewart just blitzes through the section takes a look at the spiritual mirror triples out and looks for the checkout stewart continues the lead hit james bubba stewart putting on a show his story has been absolutely dominating tonight the tucker and the 125 shootout victory for james stewart my name is bruce schoenstrom and i'm a consultant to kawasaki racing all racing including team green and our pro motocross racing been doing that for the last six years prior to this i was uh we're talking about the james stewart 125 the 2004 model where he won the championship both in supercross and motocross that year i was team manager at that time of the kawasaki racing team at that time we had just ricky carmichael had just left our program but we knew that james stewart was going to be phenomenal it was kind of interesting because you know i had gone to a lot of amateur races at that time through our team green program and had watched james grow from a mini bike rider up to a 125 rider and knew what kind of talent he had we knew that he wasn't ready for 250 for the premier class but he was going to have some dominant time in the 125 class which he did i think now i look back and i see we had ricky carmichael we had james stewart and then later villopoto and now tomac i mean how fortunate we were to have guys that were so dominant in the sport and i think even now when i look back i say think how great those guys were and how hard it is to find riders or to have riders at that capability it's very very difficult but we were very fortunate i think it speaks to how successful our team green program was not only at finding talent but also helping to develop the talent well james on a 125 was spectacular he still holds the record for most wins in the in the class both motocross and supercross and he was a super talent i remember one event in particular his first year in 2002 when at unadilla when he had gotten into a little bit of a let's say racing situation with chad reed james and chad had been very going back and forth very competitive and i know chad had somehow indicated that if he got a good start he could beat james during the first moto james was got the the start and he was in the lead he started slowing down so we got mechanics all over the track we're saying how does the bike sound is it sound okay is there something wrong with the bike chad went past him and took about a 5 10 bike length lead and then james put it got back on the gas and passed him and and won the moto and after the race we're up on the podium and we're asking like what happened anything he said i just wanted to show him i could win it was you know he had so much confidence it was just and he had so much talent and not to discredit chad reed because he's a hell of a rider but there was just a time i think for james stewart where he was just really feeling good on the bike and i think he was had so much confidence in his ability another event i don't remember what year this was i think 2003 at buds creek he went down in the first turn he was dead last at the start came back and won the moto i mean it was incredible i mean i if i hadn't been there and seen it myself i think it would be very difficult of course you can watch it on youtube he was passing four or five riders in a turn and ended up winning i think with maybe two laps to go i actually passed ivan tedesco on yamaha 250f with a couple laps to go and won the race by maybe five seconds or something but it was to watch something like that happen was incredible to to see in 2004 we had our our new 250f available and we had offered it to james to try and he did try it in the preseason but he decided to stay on the on the 125 and i think partly because he'd had so much success in 2002 and 2003 he knew it was his last year on a 125 and he felt like hey i've had a lot of success with this bike i'm going to stick with it and even as the season went on especially in motocross where he wasn't getting the starts that he had previously because i think some of our competitors had found a way to get some more power out of the 250f's he was able to pass people and still win and so it wasn't until the last race of the year he finally said i want to try the 250f and he rode one virtually stock it had a pipe on it a pro circuit pipe and we had our suspension on it and he dominated that day i remember when he came off the track the first moto he said this is so easy it's like cheating actually james was quite easy on a bike like his riding style i mean he was very easy on the engine easy on the clutch the biggest challenge was with the chassis because the risk he would take and his ability to do things that maybe others couldn't do which put the chassis in additional strain but we never reinforced the chassis we just replaced them more frequently you know obviously james was on our team and he had access to all of our factory parts i would say from the engine side we had transmissions from khi special different ratios and things actually pro circuit had the same ones we ran bigger radiators just for cooling safety they're larger than stock that we got from japan also special mikuni carburetor with power jet and tps throttle position sensor that was tied into the ecu so we could change timing and when the power jet came on things like that and to adjust it to his riding style the rest of the motor was other than rick ash was the engine developer for us here at kawasaki and james really liked a torque year he gave up a little bit of top-end power which people might find interesting but we probably ran about between one and one and a half horsepower less than pro circuit did on our bike he had the opportunity mitch was very good from pro circuit about letting him try their engines and he he liked them but he liked the torquier engine that we had he had his choice to select either one and it's because he was very good at shifting he knew exactly when to shift the guy was unbelievable in that sense you could see the way that he was so good at carrying momentum on the track and i think that was what allowed him to have the kind of success he did with the 125 against the bigger 250 f's at that time we did work very closely with him to develop the engine and chassis for his riding style so on the chassis side the frame and the swing arm were production stock even the linkage was stock but the pull rod length was different a little bit just to suit his you know his style his ride height and things like that forks were factory kyb gas forks which if you talk to ricky carmichael or james stewart they might say that might have been the best fork they ever rode on intricate fork with a lot of parts in it took probably twice as long to rebuild because of how many parts but it was very good fork so he had that in supercross he couldn't run that fork because of the production rule of the claiming rule in supercross so we had a kyb kit fork that he raced and shocked he had all the other factory parts the titanium hardware the factory wheels triple clamps everything was available to him in addition he used the tie axles and swing arm pivot this bike at the time was state of the art as far as the technology that was available to us today obviously with electronics which has been advancing quite quickly and i think that's the key for modern bikes is electronics [Music] you know james was a factory rider on our team but we worked very closely with pro circuit the opportunities i'd say for the riders on either side were the same you know he fit in really well with our team and his dad it was a big asset to him i think one of the things that i remember about james that was so unique when we started testing with him he was 15 years old and he didn't turn 16 until two weeks before anaheim won so he's he's a very young man at this time but his racecraft and his ability to adjust on the track was uncanny intelligent on a racing sense beyond his years and i attribute a lot of that to his dad i think really worked with him and helped him with that so we didn't spend a lot of time with him talking to him about lines and things like that like he he knew where to go he he saw things he adapted very quickly and it's it's very unique especially for a rider as young as he was i would say an interesting story about james during our testing was the very first day that he tested for us he was obviously a bit nervous he hadn't really been around our team i mean i was probably the only one that really knew him because of the time i had spent in that you know seeing him in the amateur side of things so he had a terrible day stefan roncata was on our team at that time riding a 250 and he was making his laps on the track and james had a terrible time getting through the whoops that first day it really was frustrating and and some of the guys on the team were thinking i thought this kid was really good and everything so i said just he'll be fine don't worry and so he had a really bad day his hands blistered up early and we we were done before 11 o'clock that first day the next day we're testing again and he was phenomenal i mean you couldn't he wasn't it didn't even look like the same person i mean he was so good he was faster than roncata on the track and one caught us on a 250. i mean it was unbelievable and the guys on the team were like this guy's unbelievable after he came in from his first practice i asked him i said well what's different about today than yesterday he said well last night i thought about it and i saw renkata go around and i kind of saw what he was doing and i just decided i was gonna do it and that was it the just the ability for him to adapt as quickly as he could like that in in literally 14 hours or whatever it was and be back on the track and just be as good as everybody saw him be as a professional rider uh in one day was astounding well it's kind of interesting when we signed the deal with chevy trucks division of chevrolet was our graphic sponsor at the time was really worried about it because as you know in the in the truck business you kind of got half the people are chevy guys and half the people are ford guys well you got toyota too and and dodge but predominantly those two brands were the fighting for supremacy all the time and they were worried about gee this could really hurt our sales of this graphic because of all the ford guys they're not going to buy a chevy graphic but it was the biggest selling graphic they ever had you know i think a big part because of of james and then obviously ricky you know you had two guys that were mega stars really and and did a good job for us and i think we worked really hard with chevy to make that graphic that kind of bright almost international orange or that bright kind of yellow goldy color so that it really stood out and at first they didn't like it and then i said well you can see it you know and i think that was the cool thing and they they warmed up to it and they let us do it because their graphic was much darker if you look at the very first year we had the chevy graphic it was gold and black and you could barely even see it but once we used this color very prominent and they actually had adapted it for other racing programs i think what's important about james is you know the bike was good but james was great and i think you put the two together and i think that really is what led to his success i mean we worked really hard for him and but he was so talented and maybe one of the best if not the best 125 rider ever i think from the standpoint of the level of talent that he had and and the success he was somebody that i'll never forget as far as how good he was at riding that bike and doing things that other people only dreamed about doing you know he created the scrub on this bike literally what he did for the sport as far as changing how people ride and how they raced was a big part you know started right here on this 125. 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Channel: motocross action magazine

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Keywords: race, wild, nuts, crazy, insane, kx125, james stewart, stewart, champ, champion, championship, fast, speed, planet, fastest, man, athlete, history, legend, moto, motocross, two stroke, four stroke, kawasaki, cali, so cal, sport, aggressive, amazing, incredible, treasure, dirt, dirt bike, action, attack, jump, trick, stunt, gap, supercross, sports

Id: SP5d5g-x5WY

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020