All eyes were on the battle for third place.
It’s March 5 at Daytona International Speedway and motorcycles are on the iconic track. Josh Herrin is going to win the race comfortably, but the competition for the last spot on the podium was compelling as two Ducati motorcycles exchanged positions throughout the final lap. Heading into the last turn, an 18-year-old girl from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with strawberry blonde hair showed off guts, boldness and slick racecraft, slingshotting her machine outside of Darryn Binder, then cleared him and made history.
By placing third that day, Kayla Yaakov became the first woman ever to finish on the podium at the Daytona 200 — an achievement that turned heads, made headlines and vaulted her into a household
name for motorsports fans.
Since then, she’s shown she wasn’t just simply a one-hit wonder. Heading into the final race of the Supersport division of MotoAmerica this weekend at New Jersey Motorsports Park, Yaakov — now 19 — is in third place in the standings with nine podium finishes.
The pressure and spotlight hasn’t bothered her at all. Yaakov wanted this and she’s embraced it as she continues to chase her dreams on the track at speeds faster than 180 miles per hour.
“I think it's pretty awesome. I'm in a position that I've wanted to be in for years,” Yaakov told USA TODAY Sports recently. “I'm finally seeing a lot of the work and the growth. I feel like we're on the right track to do exactly what I want to in the sport. I really couldn't be happier. There's some really cool things that I've been able to do. I'm just really fortunate, and I've worked so hard to be in my position.
“For me, this has always been the plan. I always saw myself racing. There was never a doubt in my mind when I was little. I knew that this was what I was going to do and nothing was going to stop me. It's just eat, breathe, sleep, racing.”
Already a trailblazer
Yaakov has already enjoyed a trailblazing career full of firsts.
She grew up in motorsports as her father, David, raced cars and bikes. By the age of 3 she was in go-karts and by 4 she was on motorcycles. Eventually, she moved into motocross and then to the discipline of racing she excels at now, road-racing with motorcycles.
“I just had an itch to race on two wheels,” Yaakov said. “Something just really clicked with road-racing and I just absolutely loved it. For me, I always loved the speed. I always felt like it was more natural for me. It was just something that I loved from the beginning and I didn't really look back after that.”
At the age of 9, she became the youngest American to race full-sized road racing motorcycles, breaking a previous record that was held by the legendary and late Nicky Hayden. And she didn’t just ride around, she won against adults. By the age of 12, Yaakov had already piled up 47 regional championships and nearly 400 victories.
In 2023, Yaakov signed with Rahal Ducati Moto to race in the MotoAmerica Supersport class ahead of the 2024 season. The team is supported by Ducati and co-owned by Graham Rahal, a six-time winner in the IndyCar Series and a member of the 2011 team that won the 24 Hours of Daytona. And in motorcycle racing, Ducati is widely considered the best of the best, akin to Ferrari in Formula 1.
Yaakov had a pair of podium finishes in 2024, then finished sixth in the overall standings in 2025 after having surgery to repair a torn ACL.
Her performance at Daytona this past year was a turning point for Yaakov both on and off the track. In 2025, she didn’t have a podium finish and came into the season-opening race determined to put her past struggles behind her. Just before the race, her crew had to swap the motor out of her bike due to mechanical issues. She started on the 15th row and then quickly started making up ground, but it wasn’t until her final pit stop that she glanced at the scoring tower and saw she was fourth.
And then, all she saw in front of her was an opportunity. She didn’t know she had made history until an interviewer told her after the race.
“The emotions were just insane,” Yaakov said. “I really am so proud of that, and so proud of just how we were able to pull through and make it happen. It really did set the tone for the season.”
Inevitable comparisons
Far too often, whenever a woman does something remarkable in any discipline of motorsports, they get compared to Danica Patrick — the first woman to win an IndyCar race, still the only woman to win a pole for a NASCAR Cup Series race, and who owns the highest finish by a woman in the Indy 500 and Daytona 500. After her historic finish at Daytona, those comparisons to Patrick came for Yaakov too.
“It's pretty surreal. I mean, obviously, Danica's a household name, but I feel like there's — it is a monkey on your back at some points, because you’ll get backlash no matter what you do,” Yaakov said. “You're always going to be put into a box or something is going to be said.
“At the end of the day, I started riding bikes because I wanted it. I feel like as long as I keep that at my core — which is the truth, I want to go out and win for myself. It's not just because I'm a girl, it's because I want to win. Of course, along the way, if I can help other girls go out and prove people wrong and just do what they want to do, I feel like that's a great thing that I have the opportunity to do.”
Another first came in July in Sunnyvale, California, where Yaakov participated in Ducati's exclusive MotoGP Experience and rode Marc Márquez's bike, the Ducati Lenovo Team Desmosedici GP26. The winner of seven MotoGP Grand Prix World Championships, Márquez is widely considered one of the greatest motorcycle racers ever — a bit like the Tom Brady of his sport. When Yaakov hopped aboard his bike, she became the first woman to ride a Ducati MotoGP motorcycle.
When Yaakov was a kid, she would draw pictures of herself on whatever bike Márquez was riding at the time in MotoGP.
“This is the best bike and it's dominating pretty much every series around the world. When you're a kid, what you dream about is riding for a brand like that. You grow up watching MotoGP and you grow up watching Ducati succeed and you say, ‘I want to ride this bike.’ And then you finally do it and you’re like, ‘That was insane,’” Yaakov said. “Márquez has always been my idol. And it’s just the pinnacle of any motorcycle you can ever ride. There’s really no words to describe that machine.”
What’s next for Kayla Yaakov?
For now, Yaakov races not at the highest level of MotoAmerica — the Superbike class — but rather the second-division Supersport class. In motorcycle racing, the difference between Superbike and Supersport is in horsepower, speed and control. In NASCAR terms, she’s not in the equivalent of the top-level Cup Series, but what would be akin to the second-tier O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. Both feature rising prospects who have the potential to become stars in motorsports.
Based on Yaakov’s performance, experience and accomplishments already at a young age, it’s not all that farfetched to see her racing at the top level of MotoAmerica soon. If and when that happens, she’d be just the second woman to race full-time on the Superbike circuit, following in the footsteps of Elena Myers who did it in 2015.
Yaakov would also like to race in MotoGP one day, which tours the globe like F1. A bucket list item for Yaakov would be to run the Lusail International Circuit in Qatar at night.
And who knows, maybe in 15 or 20 years, Yaakov might be pursuing a different type of racing. Maybe something with four wheels instead of two. She laughed at the suggestion that she could be on a NASCAR track in her 30s or 40s.
“In motorsports, there's a lot of avenues for you to go to and a lot of successful motorcycle riders end up going to cars after their motorcycle career, so it's not to say that that avenue is closed for me or not a possibility,” Yaakov said. “Right now, I’m focused on (motorcycle) road-racing. But who knows?”
Yaakov remains laser-focused on being the best she can be in the Supersport class and sees herself racing at that level for another year or two before making a leap up. More than anything, she’d like to win a championship, and hopefully avoid any additional gruesome injuries, like when she ripped her finger open during a crash earlier this season at Laguna Seca. It required seven stitches, but she was back on the bike two weeks later.
“It was a little gnarly, but I had to tough it out,” Yaakov said.
Last weekend, Yaakov placed third at Circuit of the Americas. She’ll aim for the podium again this weekend in New Jersey as her MotoAmerica season wraps up.
Wherever she’s racing, no matter the discipline or division, she’s going fast, on pace to leave a groundbreaking mark on motorsports.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kayla Yaakov is 19, making history and could be a star in motorsports
