The place: Alton Dragway in Alton, Illinois, just across the Missouri river from St. Louis
The date: April 16, 1960
The speed: 204.54
On that date at that dragstrip Chris Karamesines and his tuner Don Maynard recorded the first speed over 200 mph in drag racing history. It was the speed heard ‘round the racing world.
Some drag racing experts then and some historians still today dispute the 204.54 timing at Alton, citing the archaic timing equipment at the track. However, a quick check of Chris Martin’s “The Top Fuel Handbook” shows that there were plenty of 200-mph passes at tracks other than those on the West Coast. Don Garlits recorded a 200-mph clocking that year at Alton Dragway as well as a 204.54 at Brunswick, Georgia. Lyle Fisher had a 204.54 speed at Cordova, Illinois, and K. Chatagnier made laps on the same day of 201.78 and 197.36 in the Kent’s Speed Shop dragster at Houston that same year.
One fact that does cast some doubt about the reality of Karamesines’s legendary 204.54 was that during the next year (1961) no speeds over 200-mph show up in the history books. That and the fact that the timing system was by Fosdick which was not the most sophisticated timing system of the day. So there will always be those that doubt Karamesines was the first but since it wasn’t too long before 200mph passes became common and it could have happened Chris Karamesines is acknowledged by most as the first drag racer to break the 200-mph barrier.