It’s been 20 days since Don Thomas pocketed the most significant single payday of his drag racing career, and he cannot push it to the back of his mind. It tends to have that effect when one wins $30,000, combined with another $17,500 for a Calcutta-style auction and a custom-made trophy from Cold Hard Art. The NHRA U.S. Nationals is in the rearview mirror as Thomas rolled into Tulsa Raceway Park for the final two events in the Rooftec D4 Competition Eliminator Bonus fund.

Just mention Indianapolis to Thomas, and he's all too willing to speak of the most monumental day in his racing career. 

“I just thought the whole experience was really cool,” said Thomas. “The effort that Rodger has put into this and then the Hudson family, they’ve done a lot of work. And all of the folks at Competition Plus have done a great job of covering it. You can’t thank all of them enough. Somebody’s finally stepped up and done something big for Comp Eliminator, and Comp deserves it. I love all classes of drag racing from top to bottom. It all takes everything you’ve got. But there’s so much innovation and really bright people that come up with some amazing stuff in Comp. I don’t think it gets enough attention, in my opinion.”

Thomas isn't toeing some company line or brown-nosing a sponsor. The facts speak for themselves. How much has Rodger Brogdon’s efforts helped rejuvenate Competition Eliminator? In 2021, Competition Eliminator had 41 entries at the NHRA U.S. Nationals; this year had 63. Additionally, five of six NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series events in D4 have had full 32-car fields with alternates. A year earlier, the largest field had 24 events.

Thomas understands one thing: when you have a freewheeling, good-time sponsor such as Brogdon, having fun is high on the priority list.

“The Calcutta auction was really neat," Thomas said. "Luckily, I was smart enough to buy half of myself back. I thought the whole deal was great. There were so many people piled up around there. They were all done for the day, cutting up, and I just thought it was really fun. I thought the chip draw was a great idea to get everyone placed on the ladder. That is until I drew Greg Kamplain,” Thomas recalled with a laugh. “But when you look at that ladder, there’s not anybody on there that you would want in the first round of competition.”

Thomas beat Kamplain in a race that could have been a toss-up. 

“I knew it would take a lucky round to win this thing,” said Thomas. “Whoever won it was going to need to have at least one lucky round in order to keep enough index to win. I had mine in the first round. Kamplain is so good. I kind of knew if he didn’t red light, I was done.” 

All day, it was either trucks or dragsters for Thomas as he beat both Rick Brown and Taylor Chomiski to reach the finals against Chase Williams. Williams broke after his semi-final round, and it was Thomas who jumped in to help his opponent, who just happened to be a friend.

Luckily for Thomas, that’s exactly what happened. “I was late, and he was outrunning me, so we caught a break there. That gave us a chance to work on it. From there, it got better every run.”

“We made a really good run in the final. It was the nicest run we’ve made in a long time,” said Thomas. “Winning the Cash Clash was a great feeling. The only thing I can think of that would be better than that would’ve been to win the U.S. Nationals. I don’t even know if I should say that because it paid a lot more to win what I did.” 

It all came back to reality in the first session of Competition Eliminator qualifying at the Tulsa divisional as Thomas ran to the sixth quickest with a 7.027, -.573 under the C/Dragster Automatic index.

"It's all good, and anyway, you shake it up, that was a good day," Thomas said. "I don't know of any Competition Eliminator event you can run and come away with something like that. But when you look at it, we were grouped against 15 of the fiercest Comp racers there, and when you can win one round, much less four, against such a murderer's row of competitors and come away as the winner - I don't know that there really are adequate words to describe the emotions."