James Stewart grabbed his first main event win of 2014 in San Diego

James Stewart grabbed his first main event win of 2014 in San Diego this weekend, and the Yoshimura Suzuki rider did it in impressive fashion, passing Ryan Villopoto on the first lap and then holding off the defending series champ for 20 laps to take the “W”. The win was Stewart’s 46th of his career, leaving him just two wins behind the all-time Supercross wins leader Jeremy McGrath.

“We’ve been close all year,” said Stewart. “We had a chance to pass for the lead at Anaheim and then went down. And at Oakland to ride really good and just run out of time, so we were there all along, but now we finally put it all together. We all knew we were close; it was just a matter of time. Tonight, we put 20 solid laps in, and I thought we were fairly aggressive in the opening laps and we ran a solid pace all night.”

After the race, Villopoto admitted that he and his team struggled with bike setup, but the Monster Energy Kawasaki rider still left Qualcomm Stadium with the points lead intact and was more or less pleased with his runner-up finish.

“We were fighting the bike all day, and I felt like we should have been better in practice, but we made a change before the heat races and that’s what we stuck with for the main, and it seemed like it was pretty dialed in,” said Villopoto. “James was able to get around me early and it seemed like we were running back and forth, a couple of tenths here and there from each other. That made it hard to pass, but he rode strong tonight.”

Ken Roczen didn’t like the track and didn’t like the way he rode, but the Red Bull KTM rider still came away with a solid third place finish and now sits second overall in the series standings, nine points behind Villopoto.

“I’m not too happy with my race in the main event, but I’m happy to get another podium,” said Roczen. “I was just really sketched out, I made a lot of mistakes and almost crashed, so I’m clearly not happy with the riding, but we’re in the championship hunt, so everything is good.”

On the final lap of the race, Chad Reed got squirrelly in the whoops and ran into the back of Roczen when Roczen got out of shape trying to pass lapper Nick Wey. That caused Reed to go down and injure himself.

“I’m bummed about Reed and I hope he’s okay,” said Roczen. “On that last lap, I don’t know if he got on my rear, but I was really close to Nick Wey and I got squirrelly in the whoops and Reed hit me, so I hope he’s okay.”

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