San Manuel Yamaha’s James Stewart has spoken out about the incident that saw him collect Australia’s Chad Reed in last weekend’s Dallas round of AMA Supercross, dashing Reed’s hopes of maintaining his lead in the series.

Stewart was chasing Reed, who was in second place at the time, midway through the main event when he lost control through the whoops and charged into Reed at the following left-hand corner.

Both riders were able to remount and Stewart regained composure to score his second consecutive fourth position in a row, while Reed was worse off of the two and again later crashed in the whoops on his way to eighth.

“There have just been some unfortunate incidents here and there, just with the racing [at] Jacksonville, Daytona, Atlanta,” Stewart said. “You know, it’s definitely been tough, for sure, but like I said, I think the positive is that I’ve been riding good, and we’ll just keep fighting.

“My thing wasn’t a blatant take-out, so I can’t really fix that, you know?” he said regarding the run-in with Reed. “I swapped through the whoops and thank god he was there because I would probably have been eating popcorn in the stands.”

Stewart entered the Dallas round just days following his arrest in Florida for impersonating a police officer, and he says he’s remaining focused despite what has been a difficult year to date for the former dual series champion.

“With everything that happened I was still here this weekend trying my best,” he said. “And again, things didn’t go right in the race but I’ll be there next week and will keep it going.”

Stewart hasn’t won since the Anaheim 2 round back at the beginning of February, now sitting fifth in the points, 21 points behind title leader Ryan Villopoto.