Bench Racing Ammo: Stewart's Record

If you were watching Speed TV’s coverage of the third and final Anaheim Supercross, a really cool stat came up concerning James Stewart’s winning prowess in Monster Energy/AMA Supercross. It basically came down to this: In 45 career starts in AMA Supercross (the ’05 and ’06 FIM-only races in Canada were not included) James Stewart has won 29 times and crashed in each of the other 16 main events. (Actually, make that 30 wins in 46 career starts, because he took Anaheim 3 in that very same broadcast.)

So is the stat real? Yes, it is, and here’s how we figured it out:

It started with Feld Motor Sports’ media man Denny Hartwig calling the office with a question: How many times has James Stewart crashed while leading a main event? We sourced it for him and came up with eight different times (Orlando ’05, Anaheim 2, Daytona, and Dallas ’06,  San Fran, San Diego and St. Louis ’07, Anaheim ‘09).
But then we looked at his entire career on the 250/450 class through the pages of Cycle News, and we couldn’t believe it: Stewart had either won or crashed at same point in every main event he’s been in!

What’s it all mean? Hard to say, but you have to hand it to the man: He goes fast enough to win or he goes down trying to win. And more often lately than not, he’s winning. So his wins total 30; here are his crashes: