Bradshaw Issues All-Points Bulletin : Supercross: He says he will take no unnecessary chances at the Coliseum in his bid for the series title.

Damon Bradshaw is only 19, and he knows what he has to do to win his first national motocross championship today in the Coliseum.

To win the Camel Supercross championship and its $100,000 bonus, he needs to finish at least third--even if two-time champion Jeff Stanton wins--in the Coors Light Challenge 20-lap main event.

With only today’s race remaining, Bradshaw has 312 points, Stanton 306 and defending series champion Jean-Michel Bayle 302. This is the tightest finish since 1985, when Jeff Ward and Broc Glover were tied going into the final race in the Rose Bowl. Ward won the championship by two points when he finished fourth in the race, one position ahead of Glover.

“I’m going to approach it as if it were the first race of the season,” Bradshaw said. “I’ll try to get a good start out of the gate and win the whole thing, but I know what can happen. Look what happened to me at Charlotte (N.C.) and what happened to Jean-Michel in the last race.”

Yamaha-mounted Bradshaw had won five consecutive races and appeared to be making a runaway of the season when the tour reached Charlotte, his hometown.

“I was running comfortably fourth or fifth, getting ready to make a move, when I ran into one of my teammates (Jeff Emig),” Bradshaw said. “I barely clipped his back tire, but it was enough to drop me back to dead last and I finished sixth. Then, in the next race at Indianapolis, I was running second when I hit some ruts and got thrown over the handlebars and didn’t finish at all. From having been 26 points in front, I was third, 11 points behind.”

Bayle, a Frenchman who has lived in Redondo Beach the past two years, was leading in points going to San Jose, the next-to-last stop in the 16-race season. He crashed with his Honda teammate, Jeff Stanton, and finished ninth. Bradshaw won--his ninth victory of the season--and took over the lead.

The three leaders have won the last three Coliseum races: Stanton in 1989, Bradshaw in 1990 and Bayle last year.

Bradshaw’s victory, when he was 17, was perhaps the most spectacular since the first Superbowl of Motocross was held in the Coliseum in 1972.

“I was fifth at the start but worked my way up, passing Stanton and (Johnny) O’Mara and then getting by Bayle for the lead with less than a lap to go,” Bradshaw said. “We were in lapped traffic, and he passed me going up the hill to the peristyle. We came out from behind the pillars just about even, and I outjumped him, but I was so out of control I almost fell off my bike. I think I went over the (finish line) hill with both feet on the same side of the bike.”

Bradshaw said not to expect such heroics this evening.

“If it’s Bayle I’m racing, and I’m ahead of Stanton, I won’t do anything crazy like in ‘90,” he said. “If it comes down to the last lap and I’m fourth and Stanton’s ahead, I’ll take all the chances I can to finish third, but otherwise I don’t plan on taking any unnecessary chances.

“The most important things are to get a good start and to keep from getting tagged by the (riders) not in the top 10. They’re the ones who can get you.”

Bradshaw also has to be concerned about a sore knee that he injured last week when he fell in a 250cc national race at Buchanan, Mich. “Wednesday, my whole leg felt like it was part of my thigh, but I was in therapy all week, so I don’t think it will bother me Saturday,” he said.

This will be the second time Bradshaw has been contending for a national title in the season’s final race. The other time was in 1989 when he and Mike Kiedrowski were battling for the outdoors 125cc crown.

“With three races left, I had a 27-point lead, but when we got to the last race I had to win both motos to get the title,” Bradshaw said. “I won the first one, but I couldn’t get the second one and Mike won by three points.”

If Bradshaw wins, it will be Yamaha’s first Supercross championship since Mike Bell of Lakewood won in 1980.

Today’s 4 p.m. start may pose some unusual problems for the riders because all of the other Supercross events are run at night.

“It will definitely be hot, but that’s nothing new for us because we ride when it’s hot in the outdoors races,” Bradshaw said. “The track will get very dry, which will make it faster, also like an outdoors national. I hope by 7 it will be cooled off a bit.”

Jeff Ward, who won the 1984 race and has been in nearly every Coliseum race since 1977, is concerned about the glare from the setting sun while making the seven-story jump off the peristyle level to the football field.

“I hope it’s overcast because if the sun is shining bright, it’ll be right in our eyes when we take off,” Ward said. “It’s scary enough dropping that far without being half-blinded. About 6:30 (when the final race is scheduled to start), it could be at its worst.”

Ward, 31, will be making his final Supercross appearance, as will Bayle. Ward plans to become an automobile racer next year, and Bayle will return to his native France and start a career in road racing.