The pressure was building on GEICO Honda’s Malcolm Stewart, who has carried the points lead in Monster Energy Supercross’ 250SX East Region Championship for the last month and a half. It nearly got to him last weekend, but he bounced back big with a dominant performance Saturday night at MetLife Stadium just outside of New York, New York. Stewart captured his second win of the season and stretched his lead before next weekend’s final round in Las Vegas.

“It’s like, Whew!” said Stewart after the race. “When I looked up on the board and I saw [his lead was up to] 14 points, it felt good! Last weekend, I think I focused on the points too much. This weekend I said “You know what? The points don’t matter. I’m just going to do the best I can do tonight.” You know what? That’s what I did and look where it got us. It’s definitely a weight off of my shoulders, but Vegas is going to be crazy.”

Stewart used his technical skill to pull away in New Jersey, getting past early leader Martin Davalos and powering through the whoops and dragon’s back sections to open a lead. It was one of his best rides of the season, and a 14-point lead means he needs to finish ninth next weekend to clinch the title if second-ranked Aaron Plessinger wins the race. However that race promises to be crazy, as it marks the only supercross of the year where both the east and west regions will compete against each other.

“Anything can happen in Las Vegas,” said Stewart. “We can have a bad race, we can have teammates in the way, anything can happen, bike issues. We’re going into next weekend, I’ll cross my fingers and pray!”

Stewart will have a capable gang of GEICO Honda teammate around him, including his east region running mate RJ Hampshire, and west riders Christian Craig, Jordon Smith and Jimmy Decotis.

Hampshire is especially looking for some sort of breakthrough ride. After a suffering a huge crash in practice, and then finishing twelfth in New Jersey, he was philosophical after the race, quoting the great Johnny Cash to find inspiration.

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget mistakes by you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy or any of your time of any of your space,” go the lyrics Hampshire quoted. He then added on his own, “One thing about my struggle bus, it doesn’t stop rolling. Ready to have some fun in Vegas!”

The team’s 450SX rider, Justin Bogle, finished tenth. A few weeks ago that would have been a solid finish, but Bogle has been hovering around the top five as of late. He was happy with his riding, though.

“I had a crazy battle tonight with podium guys but it was for eighth and ninth place,” he said. “That’s just the way it goes. You have to be on your toes at all times. My start wasn’t great. Now I feel like I should be battling for top fives every weekend rather than just stoked on a top ten. I’m pretty disappointed in a tenth. I made way too many mistakes. I feel like I wasn’t that off pace; and my fitness is definitely coming around. It’s getting a lot better. I just made some mistakes. But when I would make a mistake and get passed, I fought back and passed somebody back, which is good because I’m feeling that much stronger now. That happened with I think [Weston] Peick at one point. I tried to make a pass back on Trey [Canard] then I made a mistake when I was doing it. Then I got passed by a couple guys. At the end of the day, like I said, I was battling with podium guys, just in the back of the top ten. We’re still making progress. It’s all good.“

The full team will be in action this weekend from Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas for the final supercross round, and then the Pro Motocross Championship kicks off on May 21st in Sacramento, California.

GEICO Honda Results

MetLife Stadium

East Rutherford, NJ

250SX

1. Malcolm Stewart

12. RJ Hampshire

450SX

10. Justin Bogle

Author

Dan Lamb is a 12+ year journalist and the owner of MotoXAddicts.