Team Suzuki Press Office – February 4. Yoshimura Suzuki Factory Racing’s James Stewart celebrated his best result of the season so far at round five of the AMA/ FIM World Supercross Championship on Saturday night.
Stewart demonstrated tremendous speed and skill as he raced his Yoshimura Suzuki RM-Z450 to a solid fourth-place finish as the series visited Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California for the third and final time this year.
The Anaheim 3 Supercross saw Stewart once again claim rights to the fastest qualifying time in the premier 450 class. Despite nursing an injured knee from round one, Stewart has been the fastest qualifier at four of the season’s five events. And in Saturday night’s eight-lap heat race, the Yoshimura Suzuki rider again showed formidable speed, overcoming a poor start and picking his way through the field to finish a promising third.
Said Stewart: “In the heat race, I got a bad start, but I made my way up to third. I had some good lap times on the Yoshimura Suzuki RM-Z450. I felt pretty good and I was riding pretty strong.”
At the start of the 20-lap Main, he struggled but slotted into fifth place by the end of lap one. Riding like the multi-time champion that he is, he pushed hard and moved smoothly into third place, and then into the runner-up spot. He fought an intense battle for second and ran in a podium position for most of the race before eventually finishing fourth.
“The race was pretty interesting,” said Stewart. “I got a terrible start but I made some good passes. There were a couple of different pile-ups but I was able to avoid those this week. I ran second for more than half the race and then third for another quarter – and then ended up making a couple of mistakes- but fourth place could be worse. Overall, I was happy about being up at the front. It was a big confidence-booster and I’m happy to leave Anaheim healthy and in the top five. We’ll continue to build, the Yoshimura Suzuki RM-Z450 was working awesome; and we’ll continue to work on it and get ready for San Diego.”
Yoshimura Suzuki Factory Racing’s next event is the sixth round of the 2013 AMA/ FIM World Supercross Championships on Saturday, February 9th at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, California.
