Scott Bloomquist: Hero, Villain & Legend

MOORESVILLE, N.C. – Despite the fact I’ve been writing professionally for more than a decade, I can only remember one brief in-person interaction that I ever had with Scott Bloomquist.

It came during my very first World of Outlaws World Finals in 2013, at The Dirt Track at Charlotte, and I was already fully overwhelmed with just the sensory overload of being at an event of that magnitude to begin with.

I was there predominately to focus on the World of Outlaws sprint car portion of the weekend, but I’ve always been a race fan at heart, and I recall wandering over to the late model pit area – down the hill, if you’ve ever been to the Charlotte dirt track – just to see this “different world” it was described as.

Suffice it to say that, even early in the night, there were those dedicated fans loitering around the Team Zero pit area, hoping to get even a glimpse of the living legend that was Bloomquist – or a quick autograph, if they were really lucky.

As fresh a reporter as I was, I had a pocket recorder in my hand, and I remember seeing a reporter tucked right up against the back of Bloomquist’s hauler. Said reporter was almost hidden in the shade cast by the lift door, and next to him in that shade – just visible if you squinted against the sun as it started to set – was the man himself.

I’m not usually starstruck in a pit area; I’ve grown up around enough race car drivers in my life to feel like the people don’t really surprise me anymore, but I remember on that day I couldn’t help but stop and stare for a minute.

This is a man who, at that point, had already won hundreds of dirt late model features, and yet he was standing by his hauler just talking to a media member seemingly as relaxed as if it were just another summer day back on his family farm in Tennessee.

Scott Bloomquist? The guy who routinely struck fear into dirt late model racers across the country just by pulling up alongside of them in a 50-lap feature. Relaxed? It didn’t seem possible to my mind in that moment.

Bloomer finished that interview and was just turning to head back into his hauler when our eyes met for a moment. I think I had a media vest on at that point, so he knew what I was likely there for, and the faintest of smiles crossed his face before he spoke to me in a low voice.

“You need something?” he asked. “I know what they [reporters] all say, but I don’t bite.”

I think it took my brain a half-second to catch up before I actually approached him. It felt surreal in that moment; hell, even today, almost 11 years later it still does.

“I had a couple of questions, but I couldn’t even begin to tell you what they were now,” I admitted, embarrassed out of my mind at being lost for words when faced with one of dirt racing’s ultimate superstars. At that point, a warning horn sounded to get the late model guys prepped for hot laps.

“Come back down here after [the feature],” he said. “Hopefully it’ll be a good night.”

In retrospect, it wasn’t a bad night for Bloomer. He won his heat race and ran second to Darrell Lanigan in the 50-lap, $12,000-to-win prelim feature. But second wasn’t a win, and anyone who ever knew Bloomer knew that he loved to win almost as much as he loved simply to race.

To this day I can’t quite recall why I never got a chance to go back down the hill and chat with Scott after everything was said and done that night. I may have gotten so wrapped up in the post-race craziness in the sprint car pit area that it just slipped my mind. But I never got a chance to take Bloomer up on that interview nudge.

I wish I had. Even from that … probably 60 second back and forth, I could tell there was something unique there. I could tell that the legend, the stories, and the rumored “man behind the helmet” was all true. I can’t imagine what hearing some of those tales “from the horse’s mouth” would have been like.

It was that kind of persona and that kind of atmosphere that made Scott Bloomquist a living historical gem in the dirt late model world. He was one of a kind and didn’t care what anyone else thought.

You could hear it through the years simply by the crowd reaction at every racetrack he ever went to. For each Bloomquist t-shirt in the grandstands, twice as many boos would rain out from the crowd during driver introductions. What Kyle Busch was to NASCAR racing for so many years, Scott Bloomquist was to the dirt late model masses. You either loved him, or you couldn’t stand him. There was no in-between.

I may not have always loved his attitude in front of the cameras – I think every one of us, in our own lives, has those people we could say such things about – but no matter what you thought of him, you had to respect his talent. He could do things in a dirt late model that few others, if any, could do.

You don’t just win more than 600 features in your career without being something special.

But Bloomer’s legacy isn’t just about the wins, though he had plenty of them – eight Dream trophies, four World 100s, and those are just at Eldora alone – or the championships, nine in total across the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, World of Outlaws, and Hav-A-Tampa Series.

It’s not only about his Hall of Fame status; he was inducted into the second class of the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame in 2002, and many argue that (being second) in itself was a slight to perhaps the greatest to ever do it.

It isn’t even solely about his business – Team Zero Race Cars – which is as revered a chassis builder in the dirt late model world these days as Bloomer himself was feared as a driver. When the architect makes his grand creation successful, there’s just something about that dynamic that makes others want to be a part of it.

To me, what makes Scott Bloomquist so legendary – and will make him so missed – is that he was one of those transcendent personalities that made it “cool” to be a fan of grassroots dirt racing.

Whether you’re a NASCAR fan, sprint car fan, diehard dirt late model fan, or even a casual dirt fan, the name Bloomquist is one of those that makes you go, “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of him!”

If you wore one of his shirts in the pit area, you’d either get fist bumps and cries of “Hell yeah!” from passersby or those who would turn their nose and walk away because they hated Bloomer as much as his fans adored him.

He was larger than life, in a way that few before him had been, and I’m not sure there’s anyone in modern-day dirt late model racing that can ever fill the void that exists now in the wake of his passing.

Even his competitors, as much as I know they hated when he ran circles around them on the racetrack, had the utmost respect for his abilities when they weren’t pitted head-to-head.

That respect was evidenced best by longtime rival car owner and fellow chassis builder Mark Richards, whose legendary Rocket1 Chassis company has waged fierce battles with Team Zero for decades.

“Scott and I were rivals for many years, but we both always had great respect for each other as competitors,” Richards wrote in a statement on social media. “It’s hard to believe [he’s gone]. I remember the first time I saw him race in 1983 at Kingsport (Tenn.) Speedway. I knew that day he was different.

“I am glad that Scott and I had many conversations in the past few years to verify the respect we both had for each other. The racing world [has] lost one of the best to ever do it.”

It really is hard to believe Bloomer is gone. After all, he’d survived a motorcycle accident, a prostate cancer diagnosis, an injured foot, persistent shoulder issues, a vicious flip at Eldora’s Dream XXX in June, and even an allergic reaction from a horsefly bite in mid-July. He seemed as invincible as A.J. Foyt; like nothing this world could throw at him would ever be enough to fell his unmatched determination.

I know I don’t have the words to accurately describe Scott Bloomquist, simply because I didn’t know him in the way that my colleagues who hammered the dirt late model beat did, but Chris Blair – the longtime general manager and executive vice president of World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Ill. – may have put it best in a 1991 cover article for iconic motorsports magazine Stock Car Racing.

“Many say Scott Bloomquist has changed dirt racing the same way Tim Richmond changed Winston Cup racing: by breaking the mold and going against tradition,” Blair wrote. “He’s a little brash, a whole lot different, and he’s on his way to the top.”

Scott Bloomquist may have been on his way to the top at that point in his life, but he redefined what “the top” is for everyone who came after him and followed his tire tracks on the clay.

That kind of presence is something that doesn’t come along very often, and it’s perhaps that aspect of the Bloomquist legend that will be missed most of all.

Godspeed to Black Thunder, and prayers to his family, friends, and the entire dirt late model community.

The opinions expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of Race Face Brand Development, Race Face Media, their staff, partners, or other subsidiaries.