Eli Tomac is poised to join a truly exclusive club if he can extend his winning streak this Saturday at Anaheim 2, the third round of the 2026 AMA Supercross Championship.
The new Red Bull KTM rider is in outstanding form. After a commanding victory at the Anaheim opener, Tomac backed it up with another composed, convincing win in San Diego, underlining just how quickly—and effectively—he has adapted to the Austrian machine.
The last time the Colorado native won the opening two rounds of a season was in 2023, before Chase Sexton snapped the streak at none other than Anaheim 2. Three years later, history appears ready to repeat itself: Tomac arrives unbeaten at round three, with a rare modern-era milestone firmly within reach.
Recent seasons, however, have told a very different story. The 2021 championship marked a turning point, producing four different winners in the first four rounds—a pattern that resurfaced in both 2022 and 2024. Parity has become almost the norm, which only amplifies the significance of any early-season dominance. To find a truly comparable scenario to what’s unfolding now, you have to rewind nearly two decades.
In 2007, James Stewart—then riding for Kawasaki—opened the season by winning the first three rounds on his way to his maiden premier-class title. Even then, such a streak was far from commonplace. Before “Bubba,” Jeremy McGrath had defined an era of total control: four straight wins to start 1994, five in a row in 1995, and an untouchable benchmark in 1996, when he rattled off 13 consecutive victories from the opening round.
Go back further still and you’ll find Rick Johnson winning the first five races of the 1989 season, while the original gold standard belongs to Jimmy Ellis in 1975. Ellis swept all four rounds on the calendar that year, becoming the only undefeated champion in AMA Supercross history.
Now, Eli Tomac has a chance to place his name alongside those legends. If he wins at Anaheim 2, the question will no longer be if he can do it—but just how far this run can go. Could he match the streaks of Johnson or Ellis? Or even brush up against the most dominant seasons of McGrath himself?
