Image: Simon Cudby.

Yoshimura Suzuki Factory Racing has confirmed James Stewart has pulled out of the AUS-X Open on 28-29 November at Sydney’s Allphones Arena in a bitter blow to Australian fans.

While Stewart will still contest the Bercy-Lille supercross in France this weekend, he’s opted out of Sydney in favour of preparing for his Monster Energy AMA Supercross return at Anaheim in January.

Stewart had a strong return to action by winning the Red Bull Straight Rhythm in early October. The following week at the Monster Energy Cup, Stewart suffered a jammed wrist in practice and ended up pulling out of competition after the first main event. Another crash while training further jammed his wrist.

“I’m bummed for all my fans and sponsors I won’t be able to make it to Australia,” said Stewart. “The best thing about being back racing has been experiencing all the fan support first hand. I was really looking forward to doing that in Australia, but I have to look at the big picture and we’re two months from A1 and I need to show up there healthy and prepared.

“The wrist is fine, at least as good as it can be. It’s just one of those things I can go months or years and its fine, but then that one wrong hit can set it back. I just needed to rest it a bit more before getting back at it. The important thing is I’ll be ready to race come January.”

Yoshimura Suzuki team manager Mike Webb said it was disappointing to have Stewart sidelined from Sydney: “We’re all disappointed James won’t be able to race in Australia. We were looking forward for him to get as many gate drops as possible before Anaheim, but we just lost three weeks out of our program.

“We feel the amount of time the trip to Australia would consume would be too much at this point. He has a lot of training and testing of new parts to accomplish before we’re ready for A1 and right now we’re a bit behind.

“After talking with James about where he’s at physically and where we’re at testing wise, we’ve decided that it’s best to keep him here and continue the program that that we know will have him ready for A1. Obviously James is disappointed in the decision not to race but he understands 100 percent that in order to be ready for A1, this is the best option.”

It’s the second time Stewart has let down his large contingent of Australian fans, previously pulling out of the 2009 Super X round in Brisbane less than a month out from the event.