Anyone who saw last night’s AMA Supercross race in Anaheim, California could see that James Stewart was riding close to the edge the whole race. While the crash that took James out of the lead was at least partially the result of another rider falling directly in front of him on a berm, he had a couple other huge bobbles that came close to ending in disaster. While James demonstrated his legendary bike control by saving these near-crashes, they never would have happened in the first place if he wasn’t riding on the ragged edge.
Of course, any racer worth the name is pushing his limits all the time, but the problem for James is that his main opponent, Ricky Carmichael, is a rider who always seems to have the ability to dig just a little bit deeper, pull out a little bit more. After taking a couple of losses to Stewart in the Canadian World SX rounds, Carmichael vowed to step up his game for the AMA SX series, and he seems to have done just that. Carmichael made an impressive charge last night to catch up to Stewart, closing a gap of around two seconds in a matter of a few laps. In the process, he recorded a best lap about two-tenths of a second better than Stewart’s fastest.
If Stewart is going to win the championship this year, he will have to show that he, too, can dig deeper. If James can “step it up another notch”, he can put Ricky back in the same situation he was in Canada. If not, it looks to be a close battle, but it seems that right now Carmichael has the edge.
