SAN DIEGO ---- When it came to slogging through the slop at Qualcomm Stadium, Davi Milsaps proved to be the best mudder Saturday night at the AMA Supercross race.
Milsaps capped a crash-filled night of dirt-bike racing when he won the main event over Josh Hill and Murrieta's Ivan Tedesco.
"The track was pretty slick, so I was just being smooth and consistent and not making many mistakes out there," said Milsaps, 21, who rode a Honda. "It was an amazing race for me."
Points leader Ryan Dungey went down on the first-lap holeshot along with three other riders, including Ryan Villopoto, last week's race winner in San Francisco. Nick Wey took the hole shot on a Kawasaki, but he was passed by Windham on the third lap of the 20-lap final.
Andrew Short was running in second place for most of the final, but he crashed hard with three lap remaining and had to be assisted off the track. Hill, who had passed Tedesco for third earlier, then secured his third straight runner-up finish.
"I rode conservative at the beginning," said Hill, 20. "I went a little too easy."
Tedesco earned his first podium finish for his new Valli Yamaha team.
The win for Millsaps was his first since the 2008 season, when he won two races. He earned his first podium finish of the year last week with a third-place showing in San Francisco.
Dungey, riding a Suzuki, recovered from two spills to advance from 17th place to sixth, but Suzuki remained winless in 28 Supercross class races in San Diego. Villopoto bounced back from his slow start to finish fourth on a Kawasaki.
A crowd of 51,843 braved the wet weather that sent motorcycles sliding off the track throughout the night. The afternoon rains kept the riders off the track until 5:30 p.m., five hours after the first practice session was scheduled to start. Multiple riders were thrown to the mud by hole-shot crashes in the first two heats for the Supercross Lites class, which had a spectacular eight-bike spill on the first turn of its Last Chance Qualifier race.
Not since 2003 had three different riders been victorious in the first four races of the season. Defending champion James Stewart won the season opener in Anaheim, but he got caught up in a crash with his chief rival, two-time AMA Supercross champion Chad Reed, in the second race of the year at Phoenix. Stewart, who missed most of the 2008 season with a knee injury, tried to race the following week in Anaheim with an injured wrist, but he required surgery after that race and is out for an indefinite period of time. Reed is sidelined with a broken hand as a result of the spill and hopes to return for the end of the supercross season.
Weimer, of Rupert, Idaho, went on to win the Lites final for his fourth win in five starts this year. The margin of victory was 17 seconds over Honda teammates Cole Seely of Newbury Park and Wil Hahn of Decatur, Texas, who crossed the finish line side by side.
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