Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128409
2005-06 FIM Amp'd Mobile World Supercross GP Series Reed were running second and third, respectively. After a few more laps, Carmichael started inching away from Reed, who probably wasn't quite up to tip-top shape after having suffered a fairly nasty crash earlier in the day while practicing, leaving him with a sore knee. By the fifth lap, Reed had lost touch with Carmichael but was quick to deny that the crash had anything to do with him not being able to keep up. "I'm all right, but I'm a little sore with the knee," he said afterward. "It [the injury] was nothing that could've stopped me winning tonight - just didn't have it this weekend." By the time Carmichael had complete control of second place and was free of Reed, there was little chance he had of catching Stewart, who had already opened up about a nine-second lead, and since both riders were knocking out similar lap times, the gap between them stayed pretty much the same throughout the race. (At one point, Stewart enjoyed about a 12-second gap on Carmichael.) Toward the end of the race, however, Carmichael did start making some noticeable progress on Stewart, which probably had a lot to do with Stewart taking it easy a bit, not wanting to risk crashing with such a big lead - and lappers didn't help much either. "The lappers were ... really bad," Stewart said. "There were a couple of sections, especially through the whoops sections, where I kind of had to roll every single one of them. My dad always says, you only have to win the race by a tire 18 JANUARY 4, 2006 • CYCLE NEWS mark, by that time [the last few laps], I just wanted to make sure I stayed up. I saw that he was closing and stuff like that; I just wanted to win the race." "He [Stewart] definitely got held up by lappers," Carmichael said, "but I don't think I did quite as bad; being the second guy, they kind of move out of the way, so he got held up a little worse than I did. I just tried to put in good laps, and he would inch a way, then we'd stay the same, but eight seconds behind. I just wanted to get in the battle like last week." Stewart backed it way off on the last lap and took the checkered flag approximately seven seconds ahead of Carmichael, whipping his 450 over the huge finish-line double jump. "I definitely had a great pace and was keeping an eye on Ricky and stuff," Stewart said of the race. "We both were kind of catching each other - I'd pull a away a little bit - and I think the lappers played a big part of that. It feels good to come out with two victories, knowing that we still have a lot of work to do." As for Carmichael, he's beginning to see a trend develop that he's not too happy about - his bad starts - as of late. "I don't know what the problem is," he said. "I got great starts in Vegas [at the U.S. Open], and I thought that would really help me out; man, that's not good, especially when me and James are really close, that's not really putting yourself in a great position to at least get up there to do battle. [Getting a bad start] really made out for a boring race for the fans and everybody, because James [was]