Rodger Brogdon is devoted to the NHRA’s Competition Eliminator class – and wants others to feel the love, too.

That’s why he’s bringing back his RoofTec D4 Competition Eliminator Bonus Fund in 2023.

He said the sportsman-level category is, “to me, the most interesting class in drag racing, by far, because the combinations are so diverse. So many different people out here trying to run some of the craziest car engine combinations you’ve ever heard of – [like] a Subaru engine in a dragster with a head off, a damn Hemi on it. I mean, it don’t get much more creative than this class. I just like the creativity of the class. I like the idea of just about any crazy combination you can come up with. If you can think of it, there’s probably a class you can run it in.

“I’m telling you, it’s crazy. It’s really an ingenious class. I like the no-break-out part of it. I’m not a very good racer at the stripe, personally,” Brogdon said. “You can have a car out there that runs 130 miles an hour and get chased by a guy that runs over 200. I mean, it’s crazy. I love it. It’s basically a heads-up class, no-breakout. In Comp, if you go too fast, you’re not out, but you can get penalized for the next round. They’ll adjust your index round by round in this class. If you set your index at 8.50 and you go out there and go 7.95, that’s .55 under 8.50. The next round you’ll get five-hundredths on the index. So the next round, instead of your index being 8.50, it’s going to be 8 45.”

To stir interest in the class from both racers and fans, the Houston-based businessman is putting more than $275,000 of his own money – not funds from his expanded RoofTec operation – on the table for Competition Eliminator teams. He was prepared to lay out as much as $700-800,000 this season for additional incentives for his program, but an 11th-hour glitch from the sanctioning body forced him to limit his generosity to the format’s basic payouts.

Even so, Brogdon has set a goal to acquire at least 10 associate sponsors at $10,000 each and has pledged to match those investments, up to 30 sponsors. So he could end up funneling an extra $300,000 of his own cash into the RoofTec Competition Eliminator Bonus Fund (RCEBF). That means he could be pouring upwards of a half-million dollars into the effort.

“I’m just trying to save a class that I truly love,” Brogdon said. “I’m trying to make it worth somebody’s effort to come race this class.”

The RoofTec Competition Eliminator Bonus Fund centers on all seven South Central Division (Division 4) races, plus the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis Raceway Park and the Texas FallNationals at Texas Motorplex, at Ennis.

The divisional races start this weekend at No Problem Raceway at Belle Rose, La. The action then will shift to Baytown, Texas, for the March 24-26 event that will mark the final hurrah for Houston Raceway Park. The remaining divisional races are scheduled for April 21-22 at Thunder Valley Raceway Park (Noble, Okla.), a May 18-19 and May 20-21 doubleheader at Texas Motorplex, and a final doubleheader Sept. 21-22 and Sept. 23-24 at Oklahoma’s Tulsa Raceway Park. The U.S. Nationals are set for Aug. 30-Sept. 4, and the program will finish Oct. 12-15 during the Texas FallNationals “Stampede of Speed.”

 

 

The national meets count points and a half in Brogdon’s program. It’s a totally separate points system (from the regular Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series competition). A racer can compete in all nine RCEBF events, but results from only his/her best seven will count. Moreover, Brogdon said, a Comp Eliminator driver doesn’t have to claim Division 4 to run his program.

For example, he said, “Last year, the person who actually won the Comp Bonus Fund, the hundred-grand, Adam Hickey, he didn’t even win the division. The guy who won the division finished third in my program and won the division and won division Comp. It’s a totally different point system (from the Lucas Oil Series’). So if somebody from Division 3 or Division 2 wanted to run this and claim their own division, they can do both.

The RCEBF champion will earn $100,000 of the guaranteed minimum of $300,000 in prize money. Runner-up will receive $25,000, third- and fourth-place finishers $15,000 each, Nos. 5-8 $12,500, and Nos. 9 and 10 $10,000 apiece. All Competition Eliminator racers are eligible in Brogdon’s program for the payouts at each of the seven divisional events, with the winner pocketing $3,000 of the $7,200 pot. (Runner-up will earn $1,500, semifinal finishers $750 each, and quarterfinal finishers $300 each.)

That should be ample incentive for racers to enter the RoofTec Competition Eliminator Bonus Fund – and plenty of return-on-investment opportunities for potential associate sponsors.

Brogdon said, “I do know for a fact that there’s several people this year that are building cars just to come in this program, putting a Comp car together, switching out some of their Super Stock stuff over the Comp. And now it should be really something.”

But he has issued a challenge to racers and businesses alike.

“I can’t do it on my own. I got to ask people who step up and try to help. I’m trying to do it myself. I’m trying to do it myself, but, hell, I’m an old man. I’m 62 years old, spending money I shouldn’t be spending. This is an idea that will benefit so many people and help benefit one of the best classes that’s ever been created in drag racing,” he said.

“My associate sponsorship packages are $10,000 apiece. I don’t even make people pay me up front. They don’t even have to pay until the season’s over in November. I can’t make it no easier for people.”

Brogdon has pledged to match every $10,000 sponsorship up to 30 sponsors: “If I get 30, I’ll match 30 - $10,000 to $10,000. If I had 30 sponsors, I would put up 300-grand of my own money. That would give us $600,000 to play with, and I would pay $200,000 to win [the championship]. I don’t take any money out of this. All I do is put money into it. The more exposure I get for the class, you make it more popular. You get more people want to do it and more people to join it and be part of it.

“When I was racing Pro Stock, honestly, I always had trouble asking money for myself. I’ve never had trouble asking for business, and I’ve never ever had trouble asking money for somebody else. But that’s what this bonus all about. I’m trying to get money for somebody else. People in drag racing are good people that work hard to do something they love to do. I’m trying to support the class that so many people love,” he said.

“It’s cost a small fortune,” he said, urging his fellow racers to “get off their asses” and help preserve the class and this program. He even “made an exception,” he said, and allowed associate sponsorships to be divided with “$5,000 apiece for different companies, which I really didn’t want to do. But I have a hard time believing, and I might be wrong, that every Comp racer out there can’t find somebody, whether it’s their own company or somebody they do business with or anybody, that can come up with $10,000 if they put their mind to it. I have a hard time believing you can’t do that. Every sponsor out there, except maybe one or two I have, I got ’em myself.”

 

 

Last year’s associate sponsors were AMBE Ampersand Soap Co. (Ashton and Mignon Hudson), Scoggin Dickey Parts Center (Nicky Fowler), Jerry Haas Race Cars, Elite Motorsports (Richard Freeman), Clegg Industries (John Clegg), Lupe Tortilla (Stan Holt), Turnkey Industries (Joe Napoleon), J & A Services LLC (Jim Whiteley), ATC Transmission Center (Clint Neff, Harry Clack), Quality Floors (Dean Carter), CCR Motorsports Insurance (Sean Schwartz), and Ray Skillman Auto Group. And Brogdon said he’d like to see a strong turnout again among the corporate community.

“I don’t have time to be doing it. I’ve expanded my company from just the Houston market to San Antonio, Austin, and Dallas/Fort Worth this year. I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. I tried to retire about two years ago, and I cut back where I’m only going in the office for 15 hours a week. But now I’m back in there full-bore. I’m expanding to all across the state of Texas,” Brogdon said.

He confessed that he didn’t know how many employees he has altogether but, he said, “I do know it costs me $200,000 a week to break even.” So he’s not throwing money at the Comp Eliminator class simply to jettison excess funds.

“As of right now, 95 percent of this [RoofTec Comp Eliminator Bonus Fund] money comes out of my pocket. This honestly comes out of Rodger’s pocket, not my company’s. I got my company stuck all over it, because hopefully I can get some business, but RoofTec’s not paying for it,” he said.

 

 

Brogdon has been “working on the deal with some of my suppliers to come up with a nationwide program where people can support the Comp Bonus Fund by supporting their businesses – SRS Distribution – nationwide. So I’m trying to get to the point – and I’m real close to it – where anybody in the construction business, on the residential or commercial side of it, can use one of those QR codes for me to get a little bit of credit for it. If I could get that to catch on nationwide, the program will be self-supported. So I’m working on that,” he said.

“Anybody within the San Antonio, Austin, Houston market, that buys construction material can support this program – through the QR codes, through contacting me. Any home builders out there, all I got to do is get them to switch to some of the people that are on board with me and I’ll get credit for that. There’s a lot of ways that people can help without even writing me a check,” Brogdon said. “If you’re a home builder, if you’re a purchasing agent for any kind of construction company, or a builder or whatever, just use the people that support me and I’ll get a little credit for it. That could really become something.

“The program is incredible. I just wish more people would get involved and try to help it with it. I’m just trying to get the class to grow stability, generate more interest,” he said. “I’m pulling out all the stops, and I’m spending a lot of money that I probably shouldn’t be spending on this. But I didn’t want the class to fall to the side without somebody trying to do something.”

He said, “It’s like people sit around and bitch about how the world is today but when it comes time to vote in November they sit on their ass at home and don’t do it. But they’ll be bitchin’ about it alongside everybody else. That really irritates me. I just want to tell them, ‘If you don’t want to do something and try to help me do something, stop complaining about it.” In the case of the Competition Eliminator class, he said, if he doesn’t get some support for his program – which actually translates to support for the racers – “it’s going to go away. It costs a lot of money to do this. It costs a lot of money to race any class, actually. But for a working man, you need to make it worth their while.”

Sounding like the Ghost of Comp Eliminator Future, Brogdon said, “I just want everybody to sit back and let’s just say five years from now, this class ain’t here no more. Everybody who didn’t try to help me needs to go get up in the morning and look in the mirror and say, ‘Yeah, I could have done something, but I sat on my ass and didn’t do it. And I’m partially to blame for why this class is not here anymore.’”

“It scares me,” he said, although he expressed hope. “Back in 2004, 2005, when I won a couple Division 4 championships, we averaged over 30 cars every darn race. Back then it was real competitive, a lot of fun. Honestly, everything was really, really dwindling before I started [this program]. I can see it really turned it around. I bet you this year we probably are going to average over 30 cars in a race. I just try and generate more interest.”

And he could use a little extra help.