Police Officer Hits 143 MPH in Chevy Impala While Chasing Drunk McLaren 720S Driver [UPDATED]

There’s a reason police cars need to be pursuit rated.

byKyle Cheromcha|
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UPDATE: A previous version of this story misidentified the officer's car as a Dodge Charger. It is actually a 2015 Chevrolet Impala V6. Who knew they could go that fast? Certainly not this writer, but you know what they say about assuming. We apologize for the error.

An alleged drunk driver running from police in his 2017 McLaren 720S on Sunday reportedly reached speeds of 155 MPH on a public highway in Georgia—and the newly-released dash cam video shows the officer was on his tail the whole time in her V6 Chevrolet Impala.

The police-spec Impala has a stated top speed of 149 mph when it's equipped with the 302-horsepower V6 engine, and the officer nearly pushed her car to its limit in her attempts to keep up with the McLaren. The high-speed chase started when the British supercar blew past the officer's marked car in the right lane of Georgia State Route 400 at around 3 a.m. on Sunday morning, at which point the officer accelerated and paced the 720S at 105 MPH, according to Patch.

Using that finely-crafted, twin-turbo, 4.0-liter V8 engine, the driver then accelerated to 155 MPH, a speed the officer confirmed on her in-car radar unit as she attempted to follow. She reportedly made it to 143 mph before backing off a bit, but for the most part she managed to maintain visual contact with the suspect throughout the rest of the chase. After five more miles, which took about two minutes to cover at those speeds, the driver suddenly slammed on his brakes and pulled over. A spokesman for the Alpharetta Police Department told WSB-TV that the 720s decelerated from over 100 mph to a complete stop in a "matter of seconds."

(Here's a link to the end of the chase if the video above isn't loading.)

But the best part comes just as the officer pulls up to a stop behind him. You can faintly hear the chorus of Portugal. The Man's hit song "Feel it Still" being blasted from the McLaren: Ooh woo, I'm a rebel just for kicks, now. Fittingly, the driver seems to have no good answer when the officer asks him where he was going in such a hurry, and she wrote in her arrest report that his eyes appeared "bloodshot" and he had alcohol on his breath. He then failed a sobriety test and was taken to jail, making it all the more miraculous he didn't kill himself or someone else with those high-speed antics.

Forty-six-year-old Dwayne Sherwood Pope was charged with speeding, DUI less safe, reckless driving, failure to maintain lane and driving with an expired tag, according to Patch. Our only question is, what's been going on in Georgia lately?

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