COMP-LI-CATED SCENARIO
This year’s Comp championship has a war of words second to none….
by Bobby Bennett, Jr.; Photos by Auto Imagery

If you think ladder positioning, multi-car teams and talk of dives are things reserved only for the professional ranks, think again. This year has provided a

Comp eliminator battle that has brought out the mud-slinging, allegations and arguments that would even teach the multi-car teams a thing or two. Second-place points earner Tony Stephenson alleges leader Rodger Brogdon has bought his way into his top ranking. Brogdon counters that Stephenson is doing the same things he is accused of doing by getting friends to take a dive and working around the rules. Meanwhile, the championship isn’t decided yet, as there are two other drivers with a remote chance of claiming the crown.

Brogdon pulls no punches by saying he sees the future of Comp eliminator being more of a two-car team class. That will inevitably spawn more arguments like the one going on now.

“I think it’s the future of Comp eliminator,” Brogdon said. “I think you will see a lot of the guys showing up now will be running two to three cars in the next few years. It has gotten to that point. People walk into my shop and say, ‘Sportsman racer my ass.'

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When you consider that Brogdon has two full-time employees devoted to his race team and Stephenson has a major sponsorship from General Motors, it’s easy to understand why everyone is on edge in the battle for the championship.

There were hints and allegations behind the scenes, but no one dared to come forward publicly until September 25, when Stephenson fired the first shot by suggesting Brogdon’s efforts were less than admirable. It all started on Mike Carr’s Comp Forum. Anyone with message-board experience knows that’s all it takes for a thread to spin out of control. Brogdon’s response to allegations from Stephenson only added fuel to the fire.

A week ago, the NHRA issued a statement on its website mandating that all drivers must weigh the car and give fuel samples. The edict stated, “Under no circumstances may a competitor reject scaling his or her vehicle or bypass fuel check to deliberately disallow a run. Any competitor who runs quicker than any of his or her previous runs during an event in Top Alcohol Dragster, Top Alcohol Funny Car, Comp, Super Stock, or Stock and fails to report to post-run inspection (scales or fuel check) will be disqualified from the event and charged with a zero (0) points count toward the driver's claimed races. This policy is effective immediately.”

This controversy played out during the Division 4 event two weeks ago in Noble, Okla., when Stephenson admittedly skipped a fuel check in order to manipulate the eliminations ladder.

“I didn’t want the run to count, so I skipped the fuel check, which disqualified that run,” Stephenson said. “There was no rule infraction there.”

Stephenson said he informed an NHRA tech official prior to skipping fuel check of his intentions.

“He said I was absolutely right,” Stephenson said of that conversation. “He said if I skipped fuel check it would be a disqualified run. That would mean my previous run would be counted as my run. That’s exactly what I did.”

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However, some say the fiasco was carried to the next level by the way it transpired and it provides a “he-said, she-said” type of scenario. Apparently Stephenson tripped and spilled his fuel sample at fuel check prompting Brogdon to draw conclusions of his own.

“It looked like a skit on Saturday Night Live,” Brogdon said with a chuckle. “He did this routine where he tripped and fell down like Bill Murray. It was pretty entertaining. It was crazy to watch.

“I just thought he was a nut, but little did I know it was all an act.”

Stephenson said, while some of his other actions may have been choreographed, the stumble wasn’t.

“My car was still sitting on the scales and I walked over to the tech director,” Stephenson continued. “I told him that I didn’t want to go through fuel check and explained why. I got his permission to not go through fuel, although I was going to act like I went through fuel. I proceeded to pull fuel while Rodger was sitting on the scales and I stalled a bit.

“He began to draw fuel and I walked around and grabbed my fuel and tripped. I spilled the fuel. I drew another fuel sample as Rodger was turning in his and instead of handing it to him I poured it out in his waste basket. The tech guy knew exactly what I was doing and laughed, congratulating me on my strategy. I never gave him my fuel.”

The NHRA’s ruling reinstated the run that Stephenson had wanted to have thrown out.

“Everyone has seen him buying rounds all year,” Stephenson said. “He denies buying rounds. I stood in Oklahoma and watched him beg a guy for 25 minutes to lay down for him and offered him anything he wanted. The guy told him no.

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“That’s when he got to bitching and raising hell with the tech director and the run got overruled during the course of the night. I found out the run was changed when I woke up that morning.”

No official protest was levied against Stephenson’s actions, but reportedly it was a ruling from the division director Craig Hutchison via Danny Gracia that eliminated the run in question.

Len Imbrogno of the NHRA says the sanctioning body will be more aggressive in the future to ensure this kind of thing doesn't happen again.

"There has been too much of this where guys have bettered their runs and just blew by the scales and fuel check in order for the run to not be counted," Imbrogno said. "That's not fair for the other races. From this point on, we are going to be agressive in enforcing this rule. We have to be fair to everyone in the class.

"Racers are always going to find ways to circumvent, not cheat, the rules. Everyone is always looking for the gray areas or the loopholes. We just have to eliminate those and say, 'Bingo, if you better your run...you had better stop or you are going home."

Imbrogno said that Stephenson's actions are nothing new and that racers in the class had made similar moves to avoid Competition Index Control penalties.

When it came to this situation, Brogdon readily admits that he brought it to the attention of the NHRA officials.

“I absolutely did it,” Brogdon said. “I didn’t think it was right, and I wanted a ruling from somebody to let me know if that was legal and that’s all I wanted to know. I went to our tech man and division director and they didn’t think it was right. I didn’t want them to be stuck in the middle so I asked them to call somebody in California and get their interpretation. They called the head tech guy, and he let them know there was no way that he was going to let racers dictate what runs and sessions they wanted to count.

“They told me they could have kicked him out for refusing to give fuel but I asked them not to do that. I just wanted them to put him on the ladder where he belonged. That has been a rule all along, and they have to post it to remind people.”

Stephenson denies he was breaking any rules.

“I was playing the qualifying ladder just like every other racer out there does,” Stephenson said. “I’ve done it all year and then all of a sudden at that race, I couldn’t do it. They counted my last pass and they never got my fuel sample at fuel check. It’s a screwed-up deal and I did nothing but go out there with every intention of putting him out.

“He was shadowing me and did everything he could to keep from lining up alongside of me in the early rounds. When he did that, I wanted to set him up with someone I knew could outrun him and wouldn’t lay down for him. He did exactly what I expected him to do and he was lined up with the person I had planned. When he found out about that, he went and complained.”

The first of the allegations between Stephenson and Brogdon began to fly back in June during a divisional event in Rusk, Texas. It was alleged that Brogdon had paid Jeff Miller to take a dive when in fact the car he was driving had been traded in on a new car. The offer for a blocker was made by Vic Custer of East Texas Race Cars, who had taken the car in on trade. Brogdon then bought the car and used Miller as a driver.

“Vic contacted me a week before the event and asked me if I wanted to do that,” Brogdon said. “I didn’t go around advertising it. It was my car and I didn’t feel like I had to.”

Of course Brogdon countered by pointing out that Stephenson’s second-round match against the Ken Mikel team was a planned dive that had been pointed out by the team’s crew chief and conveyed to others.

Still this championship is anything but over. By winning two races this past weekend, Jeff Taylor has pulled into third, a mere six points out of first and two out of second. While Brogdon and Stephenson battle it out, Taylor still has a mathematical chance to win it all. A fourth racer, Michael Stone, is still within striking distance as well.

This weekend’s AMERIQUEST NHRA Nationals in Joliet, Ill., will be an event that Brogdon suggests will be a “bloodbath” for the indexes because every racer will be gunning wide-open for the title. That will raise the stakes for this major battle of wills.

No one knows the value of those stakes better than Stephenson and Brogdon.

“I think it is a very prestigious honor to be a world champion in any of the classes,” Stephenson said. “I think it needs to be earned and not bought.

“Every round I've won I’ve earned, and every point I’ve got I’ve earned,” Stephenson said. “To lose the championship to someone who has bought more rounds than they’ve earned is just a slap in the face. It’s not fair to me or anyone else out here chasing this championship.”

Regardless of how the championship plays out, Brogdon says he's had fun and that he's been racing long enough to understand the pitfalls.

“I know what it feels like to race and struggle,” Brogdon said. “It’s not like I just showed up and started winning races. I got caught up in that Pro Stock Truck class. I paid my dues and paid a lot of money without ever qualifying. People need to look back and see our success didn’t happen overnight.

“This season has been a lot of fun, but I could have done without the last two weeks of it,” Brogdon said. “No matter what happens, I’ve had a good year. I won five races. As God’s honest truth…for sure…Tony Stephenson didn’t win the son of a bitch. He will never win one as long as I am racing Competition eliminator, I don’t care how much it costs me. He’s done made the wrong man mad.”   

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