A Victory for the Senior Set : Winternationals: Bradley beats old rival Prudhomme in top-fuel final.

As darkness was settling over the Pomona Fairplex on Sunday, Don Prudhomme and Frank Bradley, who have raced each other for more than a generation, came to the final round of the Winternationals and dueled it out in top-fuel dragsters as if they were stuck in the ‘60s.

They were the finalists from the fastest drag racing field in the history of the National Hot Rod Assn.

Bradley, 48, from Santa Rosa, Calif., who won the Winternationals in 1976, was standing at the finish.

Prudhomme, 49, the Snake from Granada Hills who won in a top-fueler in 1965 and four times more in funny cars, had a disappointing finish to an otherwise memorable week when the fuel pump drive shaft in his new dragster vibrated loose and dumped most of his fuel on the track.

That enabled Bradley to win in 5.419 seconds, the slowest Winternationals final round time since 1986 and the second slowest winning top-fuel time during Sunday’s eliminations.

Prudhomme, who set a track record of 4.934 seconds Saturday and ran a series of 5.021 to beat Bobby Baldwin, 5.085 to beat Shirley Muldowney and 4.996 against Dick LaHaie to gain the final round, limped home in 7.020 seconds, running 125.75 m.p.h.

NHRA world champions John Force of Yorba Linda and Darrell Alderman of Fairfield, Ill., started the new season with victories--Force in funny car and Alderman in pro stock.

Force defeated fast qualifier Glenn Mikres of Riverside, who used to work as his mechanic, in the only competitive final round, 5.318 to 5.878, in a match of Oldsmobiles.

Alderman was a walkover winner in his Dodge Daytona when Warren Johnson of Duluth, Ga., was unable to start his car for the final run. Two fuses that ignite the fuel system had burned out, and before they could be replaced, starter Buster Couch waved Alderman down the track for a solo run.

Bradley was a most unexpected winner, having qualified 11th in the 16-car field and having run no quicker than 5.155 on Sunday.

“I took a conservative approach,” Bradley explained. “The one thing I didn’t want to do was smoke the tires. I figured Snake would come off fast and either go straight down the track or lift if he smoked his tires, so I didn’t want to smoke mine.

“I got off the line pretty strong but about the 150-foot mark it started to shake and was about to smoke the tires, so I lifted and backpedaled. I backed out of it a fair amount of time before I got back in it. I looked over and didn’t see Snake, so I went on down the track as fast as I could.”

Prudhomme’s Skoal Bandit, clearly the strongest car on the premises, was the victim of last-minute changes necessitated by having fuel pump failure during his semifinal win.

“When we went to start the car in our final warmup in the pits (before the final round) we discovered that the fuel pump pulley had sheared off,” Prudhomme explained. “We had to change the complete assembly and hoped it would do the trick. It’s hard to say exactly what happened on that run until we look at the computer, but something gave out.

“It was just one of those things that can happen in championship drag racing.” To which Bradley added, “Racing luck’s got a lot do with winning.”

Many fans among the estimated 47,000 were hoping for a classic final match between Prudhomme and Tom McEwen, the Snake and the Mongoose, who were legendary match race rivals during the ‘60s, but that possibility ended when McEwen was beaten by LaHaie in the second round.

McEwen and his Mobil 1 top-fuel car, owned by Boston Red Sox slugger Jack Clark, was one of the main attractions in the pit area as Clark hovered about the car like a kid with a new toy--albeit it a $1-million one.

“We were 1-0 after the first round, and that was really a thrill for me,” said Clark, who brought McEwen out of retirement to drive his car. “For a team that has only been operating a short time, I’m very pleased and proud with doing as well as it did.”

In the funny car final, Force continued his amazing string of victories after an equally amazing string of final round losses.

“I get in these crazy ruts and can’t seem to get out of them,” he said. “Of course, I like the one I’m in now. It took me being in 14 final rounds before I could win one, but now that I’ve got the hang of it, I don’t want to let go.”

Last year, en route to his first Winston world championship, Force won all seven times he reached the final round, plus the Winston Invitational and the Big Bud Shootout, and now he’s one for one in 1991.

“Austin Coil, my crew chief, was very instrumental for making me a winner,” Force said. “He convinced me that I should go out and have fun instead of worrying about every little thing that could go wrong. Now, that doesn’t mean we haven’t had a lot of things go wrong, but I’ve been having fun watching them go wrong.”

Johnson had the quickest runs in pro stock all day, but like Prudhomme, his racing luck went away in the finals.

“Johnson was awesome today,” Alderman said. “I was very lucky to get by (Harry Scribner of Simi Valley) the first round and then get a free run in he finals. I guess it was my day.

“We almost cooked our goose in the first round when we put too much energy in the car and tried to kill the track. The track nearly killed us. We weren’t very smart, not allowing for that sunny sky and realizing that the sun was drawing the oil out of the track. We were very lucky to win.”

Alderman’s win over Scribner was one of those rare occasions in which the loser was quicker (7.413 to 7.551) and faster (187.07 m.p.h. to 184.23), but Alderman’s Dodge got to the end of the quarter-mile a fraction ahead of Scribner’s Pontiac.

The four-day attendance, announced as 102,000, was down slightly from last year’s 110,000.