As the field gathered at Volunteer Speedway for the third annual Scott Bloomquist Memorial Scorcher, drivers and competitors who once raced with and against the late Hall of Famer paused to reflect and share their memories of him.
Forrest Trent, who still competes in a Scott Bloomquist car, shared, “I’ve raced against him quite a bit really in some in these cars and that was always neat. You can always tell by the fuel cell and the window bars and stuff like that when you walk like when you walk through the pits who’s in one.”
“I can’t recall when the first time I raced against Scott was, but I’ve got some pictures of me and him side-by-side saved on my phone or my computer,” he continued. “He was obviously a legend and a pioneer of the sport of a lot of things we do these days. He’s definitely missed in this industry, in this world. I don’t know that there will ever be another one quite like him. Maybe a lot of impersonators, but he was definitely one of a kind.”
While he’s got some pictures of him and Scott side-by-side, Forrest relayed most of the time he competed against him, it was Scott going past him.
“Realistically, as bad as I hate to say it, he was kind of leaps and bounds ahead of us, for the most part. Like I said, we had some features where we run together, but it was usually short-lived. He would normally get by me pretty quick. And we heat raced some together.”
“But I guess my most memorable Scott moment was we were putting a car together over there at Shane’s and they just do some different things to the cars. We were over there in his shop and him and Cody were heating and beating and bending on some stuff. It was just one of those that sounded like a bomb went off. We all just kind of looked at each other and laughed and went back to work. I guess that’s probably my most memorable Scott moment. It wasn’t in the race car just kind of being at the shop and around those guys. It was something else honestly.”
Trent concluded by sharing the advice Scott gave him that he still takes to heart today, “Like I said earlier, these cars I feel like are just kind of meant to run straight. If you look at all the success Scott had whether he was running up north, down south, I mean some of the places everybody else runs real sideways, he still managed to get around through there real quick and straight. He just pretty much said these effing cars are meant to be run straight. There’s no reason to be backing them in the corner, driving like an idiot. Seems like that’s what won races for him and it still wins races.”
Alex Vance also highlighted the impact that Bloomquist had on the sport, “Scott had a big impact on the sport. He was huge in the Dirt Late Model world. He actually, in my opinion, put Dirt Late Models on the map with his name. Honestly, he means a lot around this area. … Everyone here can agree that Scott had an impact on them in some way whether they knew him or they didn’t.”
While Vance shared he did not get to race Scott, he did run into him quite a bit, “We knew Scott through Vic [Hill] and Barrett and them. And I run into Scott a lot at the casino, which is kind of funny. Anybody knows he liked to go to the casino. So I ran into him quite a bit. Anytime Brittney was with me he’s willing to get a picture, by myself, he didn’t really want a picture with me.”
“Any time you saw Scott it was always entertaining,” he continued. “It didn’t matter. Just a few words with him and he’ll make you smile or laugh in some way.”
Vance also shared how Scott motivated him and his fellow racers with his work ethic, “Anybody that knows Scott, he would sleep under his cars. He would work under them all the time. If anything, he motivated all of us to find speed and work on our cars.”
Benji Hicks shared one of his most memorable races that he ran with Scott.
“One of the most memorable races that I ever ran with him was the Hunt the Front that he ran there his last deal. He came to Friendship Speedway, my home track there in Elkin. Me and him ran two or three laps side-by-side there and I actually got into him and laid my right rear quarter panel into him. That’s probably the most memorable that I had with him. The other times it was just him lapping me.”
“Me giving him the quarter panel was the least of his worries that night,” he added. “That was when they had that really bad wreck on the front stretch and he got hit head-on. And it basically tore the whole clip off of his car. When I left that night they were over there with cut-off wheels and sawzalls cutting stuff off so they could get loaded up.”
Hicks also shared some advice that Bloomquist shared with him that still sticks with him today, “We went to a test at Charlotte. I think it was in 2017, maybe 2018. Anyways, we’d already been out two or three times and he still hasn’t even went out. He’s over there buffing tires and just smoke rolling off his tires. I walked over there and I said, ‘You ain’t got somebody to do tire for ya?’ He said, ‘If you want it done right, you just do it yourself.’ And that kind of always stuck with me. I really rely on my brother-in-law a lot to get our stuff ready, but when there’s really important stuff that I want to pay fine attention detail to, I always hear that voice in my head, ‘If you want it done right, just do it yourself.’ And it come from him buffing tires at test session, something we don’t ever do. Usually when we go practice somewhere, we run the same four tires all night. They don’t come off to change or to buff, and watching him do that was kind of mind blowing to me.”
Jesse Helton, who worked with Bloomquist, shared what it was like, “It was kind of an orchestrated carnival, I guess you could say in a sense. We had a really good couple years. It was when we was in a tight points battle with Jimmy [Owens] that year. Jimmy ended up winning the championship and we run second to him, but he won all the big races, the Cotton Pickin’, Topless, Show Me. He didn’t win the World and the Dream that year. That’s about the only two he didn’t win. Those are some special memories to me. There’s so many that it’d be hard to pick out one.”
“One that does stick out though is early in the year we went to Texas and we had a Southern All-Star 1600 right rear and it had a little extra rubber on it and he dug it out of the archives over in the tire storage area and we took it down there and he said, ‘That right there will come in handy for us.’ And sure enough we won that race and everybody else was having flats and we had just a little bit of rubber left on her. So we got that one. That’s a cool one that I can think of.”
Helton also shared one of his favorite racing memories as he battled Jimmy Owens at Winchester, “Jimmy kind of crowded him a least bit, in about a clean as the way you can do it in 1 and 2. And Scott come back under him going into 3 and 4 and slid up in front of him and I don’t know if he hit the brakes or what, but right in front of Jimmy and Jimmy run up underneath his backend and it flattened both his tires and busted his radiator and put him out of the race and Scott won it. But they was also throwing Mountain Dew bottles, and cans, and everything, and cussing us across the fence at the end of it too. So that’s probably the stick out one for me, probably.”
Garrett Smith shared how Scott affected not only his life, but his race craft as well. He specifically outlined how he helped Smith develop his mental toughness and preparedness.
“He would try and set up different scenarios that would maybe happen in a race that I would already be thinking about and would know what to do if something happened, tires, just all of it really. Just how to be a better race car driver, how to be perfect every lap, and everything that goes into driving these things.”
“I look back at the Portsmouth race that we won, the Lucas race a few years back. It’s like he had already watched the race and he had told me what to do on a replay,” Smith shared. “Everything he said in that race really happened 100%. So I think about that sometimes. It’s just experience. He’s done it so long and raced so much he’d about to tell you what’s going to happen, who’s going to win, what your tires are going to look like and all that kind of stuff. And that’s a big deal in this stuff. So it’s really important to learn those kinds of things.”
Shane McDowell also spoke with Richard Allen of Motorsports Report about how Scott was always innovating and finding new ways to get better.
“He was the best at it there was,” McDowell said. “He was just so focused on things and always trying to find out what every single thing done. I tell people all the time, I probably learned more from him on the chassis structure, materials, and the build, just overall structure of the race cars and material difference and the welding processes to build it in a good qualify piece. I just feel like he was leaps and bounds ahead of everybody in that area.”
“As far as the setups and just to keep pushing and testing, he made all of us pick our game up,” he continued. “We just always try to outrun him. So he definitely set the bar high for everybody. He definitely changed the sport.”
“it’s unreal how much I learned from that guy on the chassis, like I said the structure, the process, and that’s where he was ahead of everybody,” McDowell reiterated.
He went on to share just how relentless Scott was in pursuit of new ideas he had, “If he had something that popped in his head, man, he wouldn’t stop until you figured it out, or you tried it, or you tested it. Just always working hard, always thinking hard about how to make each little part and piece of the race car better.”
Finally, McDowell shared how Bloomquist operated, “He had to be the guy that just run everything on that edge. Last minute things, last minute changes. It was constantly a fire drill before a race because everything went right up until the last minute.
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