It's been a crazy week in Supercross this week.  3 out of the top 4 riders not in main event. 

Here's an article telling how James Steward rang his own bell in Indy yesterday:

INDIANAPOLIS – The injury-plagued Monster Energy Supercross season took another hit Saturday night at Lucas Oil Stadium when standout rider James Stewart got knocked out of the event with what appeared to be a concussion.
 

The two-time series champion lost momentum on a series of jumps early in the first heat race. All but stopped on the inside of the track, Stewart was struck by the trailing motorcycle of Kevin Windham.

Stewart's own bike landed on him, and the pileup included two other riders, Jimmy Albertson and Jarred Browne. Windham said the accident was Stewart's fault.

"He made a pretty bad mistake," Windham said.

Stewart lay motionless for several seconds, and it took more than a minute for two safety workers to carry him off the track. A member of his team confirmed he was struck in the head. "He was a little out of it," said Jeremy Albrecht, team manager of Joe Gibbs Racing. "At first he didn't know where he was."

For several minutes, Stewart sat on a barrier in a bid to gather himself, and then he was lifted onto a cart and taken out of the stadium.

Later, Stewart was given a concussion test, and Albrecht said he passed it … but not by much.

"It was right on the edge," Albrecht said of the results.

The decision to sideline the 26-year-old Floridian for the rest of the night was made by Stewart's father, team co-owner Coy Gibbs said.

"He was a little glazed, kind of out of it," Gibbs said of the 2007 and 2009 series champion. "It was Big James' call."

Neither Stewart nor his father could be reached for comment.

Albrecht said the decision to remove Stewart from the event was unrelated to last year's incident at Daytona International Speedway when series officials allowed Stewart to return to the race after taking a nasty spill. Stewart fell a second time trying to get back on his Yamaha and rode slowly around the circuit.

"It's just not worth it," Albrecht said of sending Stewart back out to the last-chance qualifying race Saturday night.

Albrecht said Stewart will be required to pass another concussion test prior to next weekend's race in Toronto.

Stewart entered the Indianapolis event in third place, trailing Ryan Villopoto by 44 points.

But not scoring here pushed him 69 points out of the lead because Villopoto won.

Second place is occupied by Ryan Dungey, who missed his second consecutive race with a broken collarbone. He trails Villopoto by 54 points and isn't expected to race in Toronto.

Villopoto, the reigning series champion, passed Justin Brayton on lap 16 of 20 for his sixth win in 11 races this season. It was his third consecutive Indianapolis victory, leaving him one shy of the event record held by Jeremy McGrath (1993-96 at the RCA Dome).

"I think it's definitely in our corner," Villopoto said of the title pursuit. "(But) it can turn around really fast."

Brayton led Brett Metcalfe most of the way, but Villopoto moved into second on lap 5 and began stalking Brayton.

Villopoto said the 10-turn, 0.75-mile track "was kind of soft in some spots, really hard in others."

The layout required 410 truck loads of dirt, 6,000 cubic yards in all.

Stewart's teammate, Davi Millsaps, moved into fourth place in the standings by finishing third. Windham, who fell to fifth in the standings, missed a chance to capitalize on the troubles of Dungey and Stewart when he crashed in the feature. He earned a spot in the 20-lap race by winning the last-chance race.

Blake Wharton won the Supercross Lites race, his second win in the series. The race included a rare red flag for an accident.

Kyle Cunningham remained down on the track for several minutes, but he walked to the safety cart.

Millionaire motocross star James "Bubba" Stewart, accused in March of trying to use flea market-bought flashing lights to pull over a vehicle containing actual law officers, pleaded no contest this morning to a misdemeanor related to the case.

The plea agreement calls for Stewart to perform 75 hours of community service but adjudication of guilt was withheld because he is a first-time offender.

He will be fined $500 and will be on probation for a year.

Stewart, initially charged with impersonating a law enforcment officer — a felony —pleaded no contest to a first-degree misdemeanor charge of using flashing or rotating lights on a motor vehicle.

He declined comment after a brief hearing at the Osceola County Courthouse.

The Central Florida motocross champion, whose website calls him "the Tiger Woods of supercross," was arrested March 28 on the impersonation charge, the Florida Highway Patrol said.

Stewart, 25, was driving a 2008 Toyota Tundra pickup northbound on State Road 417 at 4:50 p.m. when he tried to stop another vehicle using red and blue police-type lights, troopers said.

Unfortunately for Stewart, the vehicle contained two off-duty highway-patrol troopers, who quickly suspected that the pickup was not an undercover police truck.

As Stewart pulled alongside the vehicle, its driver identified himself as a legitimate law officer. That's when investigators said the flashing lights stopped and Stewart sped off.

The off-duty troopers called 911, and an Orange County deputy sheriff and an Orlando police officer stopped Stewart at Orlando International Airport. Troopers arrived later and arrested Stewart.

In a 911 call, Trooper Kevin O'Quinn, driving the vehicle Stewart was accused of trying to pull over, said he had no doubt the motocross star's souped-up truck was not a law enforcment vehicle.

"I can guarantee you this is not a cop," Quinn told a dispatcher during his call reporting the incident.

This is a developing story. Check back later for updates.

It would be NASCAR's dream race in many ways: Ricky Carmichael, Travis Pastrana, James Stewart on the grid of the Daytona 500, legions of 18-to-39-somethings huddled around televisions and smart devices, breathlessly watching this triumvirate of motocracy as it prepared to compete in Sprint Cup's premier event. Oh, the brand new merchandise they would be wearing. Oh, the loyalty for their new sport of choice bursting from their young and impressionable hearts as they follow their motocross/supercross/action sports heroes loyally to their new vocation.

It might happen, Carmichael said. But it won't happen anytime soon. And he says that with the best perspective of any of his fellow two-wheel legends (Pastrana has a background in rally and some developmental series experience). Four years into his NASCAR career, the 31-year-old motocross legend says that the conversion to stock cars is incredibly difficult, too difficult to be rushed if success is the ultimate goal. With Pastrana's NASCAR debut now delayed until next season after breaking his foot and ankle in an X Games "Best Trick" crash in July, and Stewart even further away with unfinished supercross and motocross business (he says he wants to race bikes for at least the next three seasons) after signing with Joe Gibbs Racing's motocross team this week, this story, Carmichael said, will have to wait even longer because of the "steeping learning curve."

"It would be cool to race him [Stewart] and Travis and all those guys," Carmichael said in a phone interview. "It's definitely a cool story. Not too many people can say they've raced in two completely different sports together. As cool as it would be, I think it would be a long way down the road. I have three years under my belt and it takes a long time."

Elementally, Carmichael said, conforming a motorcycle to the driver's will is easier than the same task with a stock car. And it doesn't matter the quality of the will or the talent.

"Man vs. machine, it's probably 70-percent-to-80-percent man, 20 percent machine in motocross and that's backwards in car racing," said Carmichael, who has a record 15 championships and 150 wins combined in motocross and supercross. "Obviously, these guys are very skilled, they're the best at what they do in stock car racing, but it's hard to make lemonade out of lemons in car racing.

"There's so many more things you can do on a motorcycle to manipulate the motorcycle. It's two less wheels to worry about, less moving parts to worry about. You can manhandle the machine more. Car racing, there is just a lot more things happening underneath the hood and how things work and people setting the car up. These motorcycles, a lot of them, you can hop on and win on, which in car racing -- it's not really like that. It's about how it's set up and how good your equipment is."

And even if a driver is willing to log the hours to learn such a skill, Carmichael said, NASCAR's testing limitations prevent them from doing so.

"It's so much different than motocross because he's not going to be able to go out there and outwork everyone, as maybe his strategy was in motocross and supercross," Carmichael said. "That's what my strategy was. That was no secret. That was how we won, outworked everybody. It's tough, so you have to find ways to be better, better yourself other than testing."

Carmichael, who said he is friendly with his fellow Floridian but hadn't discussed NASCAR with Stewart, said the 25-year-old would be wise to concentrate on one regimen at a time, especially if his stated goal is to surpass Jeremy McGrath's all-time supercross wins record of 72. Stewart is currently third all-time with 42 (Carmichael is second with 48) after consecutive injury-marred seasons. Stewart, however, seems eager to dabble, immediately.

"I look at the future, and I think car racing is the future, sure," Stewart said. "But I have a lot of things I want to accomplish on the motorcycle, and the first thing I want to do is win a championship for these guys. ... I'm going to get my feet wet with that [car racing]; in fact, in a few weeks, I'm going to test one out. But for now my main focus is to win a championship on this motorcycle."

Carmichael, who expects to return to Turner Motorsports in the Truck Series and run selected Nationwide events next year, said he had a "three-year plan" when he signed with the now-defunct Ginn Racing in 2006 as he prepared to transition from arguably the greatest motocross career in the sport's history to NASCAR. Carmichael said he thinks "NASCAR would be pumped if I was in there, either Nationwide or Sprint Cup. I think they'd be happier than me racing in Truck, for sure," but added that he doesn't want "to commit career suicide by moving too early. The people I lean on say do not move up too early."

He has 18 starts in the developmental K&N East Series, seven in ARCA, 65 in the Truck Series and seven in Nationwide since 2008. Carmichael was fourth in the ARCA-opener at Daytona this season and fourth in the Trucks race at Talladega last week, tying a career-best. JGR appears to have Carmichael on an expedited schedule -- he is scheduled to test a Late Model within the next few weeks and hopes to make spot starts in the K&N and Nationwide Series in 2012 -- which Carmichael finds unwise.

"For someone like me or Travis, and James, we don't know what is really going to happen," Carmichael said. "I do know this: Yeah, we want to be in Sprint Cup. It would be great if I could make it there. That's what I want to do and I won't be happy until I get there. It takes time to do it right. The worst thing you can do is rush into this and think you're going to set the world on fire.

"Everyone wants to rush into the Nationwide Series. It's the first thing they want to do. I totally disagree with it. I think you need to do some Late Model racing or East Series and then to Truck and then move on up. I really do. Basically, everyone racing in the Nationwide Series was awesome in truck. Hell, everybody in Cup Series has won a bunch of races in the Nationwide Series. There's a reason they race on Sunday."

SX: James Stewart Signs With Joe Gibbs Racing

James Stewart will compete for the JGRMX squad after inking a new multi-year deal with the Yamaha-backed outfit.

Source:  http://moto-racing.speedtv.com/article/sx-james-stewart-signs-with-joe-gibbs-racing/

Associated Press - 04.17.11, 02:01 AM EDT

SEATTLE -- James Stewart raced to his second straight AMA Supercross victory and fifth of the season, easily beating Kevin Windham in cold conditions Saturday night in front of 52,683 fans at Qwest Field.

Stewart, the Yamaha star from Haines City, Fla., was making his third start since his felony arrest last month in Florida for impersonating a police officer.

Points leader Ryan Villopoto was fourth. He has a six-point lead over Chad Reed, third Saturday night, with two races left. Ryan Dungey, the fifth-place finisher, is third - seven points behind Villopoto.

Stewart is fourth, nine points behind the leader.

Earlier, Honda's Cole Seely, from Corona, Calif., won the AMA Supercross Lites West race, leading wire-to-wire for his second victory of the season. Broc Tickle was third to take the points lead.

 

SPEED's Ralph Sheheen and Jeff Emig break down Saturday night's Supercross main event following yet another wild night of action in Seattle: