These race teams are a money making biziness. Mr. Stewart is a hot commodity and brings in lots of sponsor cash, crash or not he's an attention getter, a media exposure whore. His name and team name are constantly flowing off the big 3s mouths all through the show, the cameras seem to follow him even when he is in 10th coming back from a crash, which they replay a dozen times and talk about 2 dozen times. Lots of money with all the Toyota/JGR commercials during the show, more exposure. This aint a fave rider thing its a big cash biz, and JS7 is JGR company earner. Coach Gibbs and Coy arent going to give up on him as easy as the fans do, the team is a sharp, calculating, top notch biz operation. Sure when the cash doesn't flow along with the results eyes will turn to other players/assets. just more food for thought to keep the thread wound up.
Agreed, 30 yrs. ago Bubba would have a second seat ride with his results and unwillingness to race outdoor events. Things have changed to the degree that the Media now scores the talent not the results of a given event or championship. Its hero worship as pronounced by TV or whatever monthly Mag you read, it's all about air time for some and depending on the pecking order none for others. Stewart is no more than the shiny item of the week, which is not to say he is not a great talent but it's fleeting. An example of this is the tests or whatever you can call them with dirt bikes it's just fluff, i certainly hope that Joe Gibbs keeps him he is a drawing card but he is not David Thorpe.
Who would you replace him with? There are only so many guys capable of a top 3 finish if you are actually wanting to finish on top ..
Exactly, I mean even in a bad year like now he is one of the top 5 SX dudes in the world. I mean seriously.
They could replace him with Pee Wee Herman on his pedal bicycle. Just imagine the press that would get... and the race results would be almost the same!
Pee Wee can crash as good as Bubba. Well... maybe not. But at least Pee Wee would jump up from the crumpled heap and shout... "I meant to do that!" View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJXU7EVXs2A
JS is good for the marketing machine that is supercross. Wether you like him or not you have to realize that fans tune in to see him win or hope he loses, kind of like Mahummad Ali or Jimmy Connors in tennis or the Notre Dame football team. JS is a billboard that gets more air time then the guys who are beating him so until we stop talking about him and creating threads dedicated to wether or not he will crash or get fired or end up in a wheelchair or what ever, he will remain a top paid pro. I'm starting to think krieg is part of JS's marketing team.
He's still a drawing card but with all these ~< 10 lap races .... Sponsors may start to take note of this ... Team owners are really directed by sponsors .... Sponsors dry up and low&behold, heads roll, pay scales slide, teams change ... cr22 did not branch out on his own till no team would hire him or would not pay what he wanted .... Its a little hard to understand stew ... I have not saw his recent crash, but ~all his other recent crashes have no real excuses other than rider mistake ... He crashes more than the rest of the entire field (of top riders) combined yet he almost always rises to race again (and crash) ... If anyone can remember yrs back when he was moving into the 250 class, up from the 125s, there was a big question mark on if he could ride the bigger bikes .... Has anyone seen in writing where he is committed to the 012 MX season? I'd rather he did not ride the out doors .... Its very obvious to me that this guy is a top 10 rider, maybe top 5, but nothing close to ever being a champion again unless major changes are made to his riding style ... ( RV1 is starting testing for MX in the very near future ...It's his title to lose no matter who is on the starting line ) PS --- Just saw his last crash ... It was all him ... Landed slightly off on a table top landing and ate it coming off ... He did it correctly on ~14 laps ( 8 lap Heat #2 and 6 in the main) and then on lap 7, he over jumps and eats it ... He looked really disgusted at all of it as he walked off ...
Im not convinced that Toyota is interested in Crash or Win representation, they're pushing Camry's and Prius and pickups. I used to ride like that....when I was 16. The limelight for the 'worlds fastest 125 amateur'* has limits. *Stolen from someone I know.
Yep, I really hated to see that ... He was really going for it in the race ... I'm glad it was not worst than what it was .... I found this on the web: http://espn.go.com/action/fmx/story...dham-injured-ama-main-event-streak-broken-102 "I've definitely got a dislocated shoulder so that ends my season right there," Windham said. "I've had my wrist examined by two doctors; one said it was broken and the other one said it's not. It's very swollen and black and blue so it's hard for them to tell. I'm going to see another specialist and have an MRI done to see exactly what's up. We just need get it fixed properly."
Mid-week report on stew via amasupercross.com ... One of RV's primary competitors who's been stunned by his success is certainly James Stewart. After having a relatively miserable season (by his standards), Stewart showed up in Houston with virtually no hope of regaining the title or even reeling Villopoto in enough to prevent him from taking it. What resulted was an impressive heat race ride followed by (somewhat predictably) a hard crash in the main event while working up from another poor start. Disgusted and somewhat frazzled by the get-off, Stewart walked off the track for a DNF. It's unclear at this point what his status is for New Orleans, but his participation doesn't seem likely at this point.There is also a rumor out there that stew is not on board for the MX season and Andrew Short is being courted by JGR for the outdoors season ... just a rumor ... Myself, I'd be OK with AS on a yammahammer ...
