Eighteen-year-old Elena Myers made history on Saturday, March 17, when she became the first female to win a professional motorsports event at Daytona International Speedway with her victory in SuperSport Race 2.
Competing for Team SuzukiScoopFans Racing, Myers took the checkered flag in the season-opening round of the 2012 AMA Pro Motorcycle-Superstore.com SuperSport Series at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Riding the Suzuki GSX-R600, Myers started the weekend by carding a front-row grid position during qualifying. In Friday’s AMA Pro SuperSport race, she became reacquainted with the Daytona track and its notorious banking, running up front in a podium position for several laps before finishing a respectable sixth. Then, on Saturday morning, Myers pulled out all the stops and battled for a podium position all 10 laps. Myers waited until the final lap to put herself in exactly the right spot to take advantage of the Daytona draft and capture the win by 0.240 seconds.
Saturday’s victory was Meyers’ second career AMA Pro victory. Her 2010 win at Infineon Raceway in the SuperSport division made her the first woman to win an AMA Pro road race. The teenager is from Discovery Bay, California, and started racing at the age of eight.
