“ Having the pressure on me pushes me to do my best.”
THE CHAMPIONS ISSUE
DeWayne Mills
The Golden Gorilla’ s Golden Rule By Ainsley Jacobs
PHOTO: JEREMY PATTERSON
They say that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In radial tire racing,“ Big Daddy” DeWayne Mills, 46, is widely considered the man to beat. His relentless string of record-setting passes, major money wins, and his recent championship title consistently reiterate that he’ s a hell of a driver with a hell of a support team to back him up. Yet through it all, and despite his wealth of power, Mills is one of the most downto-earth guys on the scene and is still as humble as the day he started racing. He’ s the exception to the rule, and proves the statement wrong.
Based out of Sand Springs, Oklahoma, it hasn’ t always been drag racing that piqued Mills’ s interest, though. It was his mother who took him to his first race, and he got his start crewing for a sprint car team. Later in life, Mills married his beloved wife, Tara, and the two had their first daughter, Kallee.“ Me and the wife traveled doing the sprint car thing for five or six years, but we decided to have a kid and I wanted to stay home and be a good father,” he explained of his decision to quit life on the road and instead start his own business, Mills Truck and Tractor Service, in 1996.“ It all grew together, and I have no regrets staying out of the circle track deal.”
Mills couldn’ t abstain from racing altogether and eventually decided to give drag racing a shot. The self-employed, self-made man purchased a’ 68 Chevy Camaro in 2000 as a 30th birthday gift to himself and started on a journey that would far exceed his wildest dreams.
That car, which eventually transformed into the infamous powerhouse now known as“ the Golden Gorilla” actually began as a street car.“ I started off running around the scene here in Tulsa, but I had a dump truck business and I couldn’ t jeopardize losing my CDL over drag racing on the street, so we went to the strip,” he openly admitted of his less-than-legal early days.“ We started running in the MAKO Outlaw 10.5 series and actually did pretty well! It was all quarter mile back in the day and the car had a nitrous setup at the time … the fastest cars were in the 9.70s and we were running 9.50s. It progressed from there and it was scary because I only had a six-point cage in the car – it was horrible.”
Knowing that he needed to step up his game if he wanted to continue racing, Mills made a plan to take his racing program to a whole new level. What initially started out simply as a safety necessity progressed
“ Having the pressure on me pushes me to do my best.”
over the past 17 years, and the steel-bodied car has gone through a continual transformation.“ We’ ve cut the body off three times, and it looks like we’ ve got a dune buggy under there,” laughed Mills of the car’ s SFI 25.2 chassis, which was managed by Rob Matheis at Matheis Race Cars.“ It’ s actually just a nine-year-old Limited Street car chassis that’ s been updated.”
In its present state, the“ Golden Gorilla” hides a 572 ci Pro Line Racing 481X power plant under its hood. The Alan Johnson blockbased bullet is stuffed with the aftermarket’ s finest, including a Bryant Racing crank and Bill Miller Engineering connecting rods and pistons, and is topped with Alan Johnson heads which feature matching Alan Johnson valvetrain components. In order to ensure the engine is able to produce over 3,000 horsepower, a set of twin Precision turbochargers are sized to meet the rules of whatever class Mills happens to be racing in at any given weekend and are bolted to a set of stainless steel exhaust manifolds.
Mills is fiercely loyal to brands that work well for him, and, as a result, he has a longstanding history with both ProTorque and M & M Transmission for his EV1 converter and three-speed TH400 transmission, respectively.
Running on VP Racing Fuels’ M1 methanol fuel which is supplied via a set of Billet Atomizer fuel injectors, Jamie Miller of Pro Line Racing manages the critical calibration of the FuelTech engine management system. Every ounce of power possible is coaxed from the combination and transferred to the ground via a set of sticky Mickey Thompson 315 pro drag radial tires. To keep the car firmly planted to the pavement, Mills runs a Strange Engineering rear end with Santhuff struts and Menscer Motorsports four-way adjustable rear shocks.
With all the variables in his equation adding up to one seriously badass Camaro, Mills made history in April of 2014 when he set a new Outlaw Drag Radial world record. While racing at the Shootout at the Springs, Mills ran an unprecedented 4.105 at 196.25 mph pass in the eighth mile.“ Tim [ Davis, crew chief ] had completely rewired the harness and we rebuilt the engine before that event, and we only got about four hours of sleep the entire weekend,” he recalled of the dedication required to make the record happen.
Although Mills lost the record shortly after, he quickly reclaimed it in July of 2014 while racing at the Radial Revenge event at Osage Casino Tulsa Raceway Park.“ We had the right combination of a great
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