Late Sunday evening in St. Louis, long after the majority of the rain and sun-drenched racing fans had already headed home from the NMCA Muscle Car Nationals to prepare for their Memorial Day celebrations and leaving only a scant few diehards to witness it, Oklahoma native DeWayne Mills and his twin-turbocharged Camaro blasted off into the darkness in a titanic semifinal matchup in the Radial Wars class with Keith Berry, lighting the scoreboards up with a winning 4.232-second elapsed time, with a staggering speed of 202.24 miles per hour — the fastest ever recorded in the eighth-mile by a radial tire-equipped car and the first over the magical double-century mark.

The numbers, so shocking that even the majority of Mills’ own crew didn’t realize what the left lane scoreboard read until well after their raucous celebration of winning the round had commenced, put Mills into truly uncharted territory. And within minutes, it had elicited conversations of “did-he-or-didn’t-he” amongst NMCA officials and those at home on the internet, given just how much of a performance jump this was over previous marks in the class of 196 miles per hour and change. 

No one on the property doubted Mills’ sleek Camaro was burning a metric ton of coal on the back half of that match with Berry, and it seems the Mills camp has put the questions of whether it was rolling that quick or wasn’t to rest, with telemetry to support their monster pass.

According to the team, some changes were made to the fuel map for that particular run, and the car registered a higher engine RPM and Driveshaft RPM at the finish line than any run previously, including a 196 mile per hour blast of their own earlier this year. This, with 5-percent slippage of the converter and a 3.89 gear nestled under the car.

The debate may well rage on, but most would agree that 200-plus is within the realm of possibility, and the Gateway Motorsports Park racing surface is and always has been plenty quick to take it, with NMCA starter TJ Bailey providing a killer prep-job for the radial racers. And with some pretty solid data to back it up, DeWayne Mills just may be the first (and only) man over 200 on radials — an incredible feat that checks off yet one more small tire milestone.