While their first event at Great Bend was a windy, dusty mess, the next three AHRA Nationals were gala events won by racers who would become some of the biggest stars in the history of the sport. The 1957 Top Eliminator crown was won by Emery Cook at the wheel of the fabled Cook & Bedwell dragster, with the next two titles going to Garlits and Karamesines.

What was especially important about the 1957 through 1959 events was the emergence of the Top Fuel eliminator category.

At both the first NHRA and AHRA events, the organizations had, by today’s standards, a primitive way of determining the race’s one winner, its Top Eliminator. For example, NHRA’s 1955 event had a runoff of the winners of the three fastest categories and the winner there would then run the winner of the dragster class for the overall title. AHRA had a similar operation for Top Eliminator at their 1956 race.

By April of 1957, both shows took noticeable turns in method. NHRA, following the lead of many race tracks, banned the use of nitro-methane, instead making the blown gas dragsters their top of the line performers. This opened the door for AHRA to champion the crowd-pleasing and more potent nitro-methane . At their 1957 event, the organization set up Top Eliminator a little differently; they ran a fuel class and a gas class and the two winners ran off for overall Top Eliminator. In 1957, AHRA’s fuel cars consisted of dragsters, roadsters, and coupes and likewise for those racers running gas. To show how diversified this was, top speed of the meet was not set by a dragster but by Lyle Fisher at 152.80 mph in the Speed Sport roadster.

The ‘57 Top Eliminator title went to Cook when he drilled long-time AHRA gas competitor, Bob Rodgers, in the finale, and the ‘58 Top Eliminator final went the same way categorically. Garlits' fuel-burning “Swamp Rat” beat the gas-burning Kansas Kustom Olds in the Top Eliminator final, and in 1959, Karamesines’ fuel-burning “Chizler” topped Eddie Hill’s (THAT Eddie Hill) Pontiac gas burner the following year.

Big Daddy, 1978. Photo by Richard Brady

“AHRA, and in the middle 1950’s, the ATAA (Automobile Timing Association of America), ran nitro," said former AHRA president and 10-time AHRA Top Fuel champ “Big Daddy” Don Garlits. “I had run the ATAA (World Series of Drag Racing) event on nitro race. In fact, the ATAA World Series, which they first held in Lawrenceville, Ill., and later Cordova, really was the first of the big races for fuel cars and that was the way I wanted to race — on nitro.

“NHRA and a number of tracks wanted gas only and that was all right with me, too, because my brother Ed and I had a gas dragster. We could go both ways.

“The 1957 event was AHRA's first time with the fuel cars running amongst themselves and the gas cars doing the same, and that’s the way it was for a few years because of the climate then. The 1956 year was NHRA's last with fuel until the 1963 Winternationals. It's fair to say that it was out of this kind of classification that the Top Fuel class came about.”

At the 1958 AHRA Nationals, there was a separate fuel dragster class for the first time and it was listed under the heading of A / Dragster. Garlits won that title by beating Lou Cangelose’s “Missouri Mule” in that final.

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