Motorsport.com Yamaha’s Mesa Wins AMA SuperSport Race 1

2013 AMA Pro Motorcycle-Superstore.com SuperSport Race 1 Results

Colombia’s Stefano Mesa outpaced nearly 60 other competitors Saturday at Daytona International Speedway to win the season-opening race for the AMA Pro Motorcycle-Superstore.com SuperSport series.

“The bike felt awesome,” Mesa said. “The team put together such a great bike for me.”

Mesa dueled in the draft all race long aboard his Motosport.com Yamaha and was able to hold off a pack of six bikes, which were ultimately separated by .274 second at the finish line. Dave Sadowski Jr. was second on his Yamaha and Hayden Gillim was third riding the Team 95/RM Racing Yamaha.

“I was leading going into the last lap so I backed it down going into Turn 1,” Mesa said. “Somebody passed me, which was what I wanted. When we got to the banking at the end I made my move. This win feels good; I hope have a lot more of them this year.”

It was Sadowski who had passed Mesa and he said he felt like a sitting duck being out front on the last lap as the lead pack followed him into the back-stretch chicane. He knew someone would try to slingshot around him when they re-entered the superspeedway, which is exactly what happened.

“It was quite a wild race from my seat,” Sadowski said. “I had a lot of moments there as it went along and I didn’t think I was even going to make it up to the lead group. I was up on the banking at one point and it felt like they were slipping away.

“But I got up there and ended up in the lead on the last lap, where is where you don’t want to be. I slowed up in the chicane because I knew I couldn’t be in the lead and still have a good chance at getting the win.”

Gillim won a photo finish for third with Matthew Sadowski with the final margin between the two bikes a mere one-thousandth of a second.

“I knew it was going to be a battle, that’s Daytona,” Gillim said. “I knew my bike was running fast, and I knew if I could get into the draft early I could hang with the leaders. When it came down to those last couple of laps, I knew I could at least get a podium and I was hoping I could get enough of a draft for the win.

“Everybody started slowing down on the backstretch to set up for the last part of the race. I decided to go for and ran up into second or third a little early and the move paid off for me.”

Motorcycle Superstore Yamaha team rider Devon McDonough finished 12th in his season debut.

The AMA Pro Motorcycle-Superstore.com SuperSport series gets right back at it on Saturday morning with a second 10-lap event starting at 10 a.m. EDT from Daytona International Speedway. The race will be broadcast on SPEED TV.