7 Wild Scott Bloomquist Moments From Eldora's Dirt Late Model Dream
7 Wild Scott Bloomquist Moments From Eldora's Dirt Late Model Dream
Scott Bloomquist and Eldora's Dirt Late Model Dream are synonymous.
Scott Bloomquist and the Dirt Late Model Dream have their storied histories intertwined. Bloomer has 8 (!!) Dream victories to his credit and has been a mainstay at Eldora since the first Dream edition in 1994. DirtonDirt's Todd Turner takes us on a look back at the best (and worst) Scott Bloomquist moments from Dream history.
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1994
With the sport's first-ever $100,000 purse on the line, Scott Bloomquist dominated most of the inaugural Dream, but it all came to an end eight laps from the finish when a deflating right-rear tire slowed him, handing the lead and victory to Freddy Smith. “We had enough rubber left but just cut the tire,” Bloomquist said later. “To be that close, and then have it be a letdown like that … we came back to fourth, but still we got a small check instead of a big check. It makes for a long ride home.”
1995
Scott Bloomquist hounded race-long leader John Gill before pouncing shortly after a restarting, taking command on the 78th lap and pulling away for the first of his eight career Dream victories. Bloomquist remembered last year's heartbreak of a late-race flat tire. "In tonight's driver's meeting they said 'To finish first, you must first finish.' I kept that in mind throughout the race and set my pace accordingly," Bloomquist said after the race. "The car just worked perfectly."
1997
In one of the wildest sequences in the history of Dirt Late Model racing, Scott Bloomquist gets into leader Bill Frye in turn one, spinning the driver who four laps earlier had overtaken Bloomquist. With fans whipped into a frenzy during the ensuing caution, Frye rams Bloomquist's car and is quickly disqualified, while Bloomquist continued in the lead until breaking on lap 70. Bloomquist later said he misjudged Frye's line and couldn't get on the brakes fast enough to avoid him. "I hated spinning him around." Bloomquist said. Frye lost his best-ever chance for a major-race Eldora victory. "Of course, he claimed he didn’t mean to do it," Frye said later, "but I could hear his motor running as he turned me around."
2003
At odds with officials many times in his Eldora career, in 2003 Scott Bloomquist was robbed at a chance to compete in the Dream when he failed to appear on the starting grid for the first heat race. Bloomquist blamed his failure to appear on conflicting lineup sheets that confused the team and left them in the outer pit area when the initial prelim went green. “They don’t wait on you here and they just apologize to you later,” he said. “It’s my fault. When I headed for the gate, I never considered that we were starting anything but the sixth heat. I messed up by putting faith into doing anything except going down there into the infield and looking at the sheet myself."
2006
Stalking leader Scott James beginning on lap 72, second-running Scott Bloomquist took advantage amid traffic to grab the lead with seven laps remaining and pocket his fourth career $100,000 Eldora paycheck. “I was watching his line and I was watching to see where he was making mistakes so that when I did get to him, I knew where the strongest point would be to pass," Bloomquist said. Suffering a bitter loss, James said that "when you lose to Scott Bloomquist, he's the best," but he struggled to find anyone other than himself to blame for the turn of events. "I guess I blew it."
2015
When announcer James Essex intoned "there's no green light," Scott Bloomquist was robbed of another $100,000 victory with his car 25 pounds shy of legal weight. After coming out on top a stirring late-race battle with Jonathan Davenport, Bloomquist's bitter trip to scales sent the apparent runner-up to victory lane instead. "I don't know if I deserved to win it because I didn't win it the way I wanted to," Davenport said. "But we definitely had a dominant car all week. Scott had a really good car and I knew that it was probably going to be down to me and him at the finish.
2019
Making his return from serious injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident, Scott Bloomquist was in the middle of perhaps the craziest heat race in Eldora history. Bloomquist started on the pole of the night's fifth heat, overcame a penalty for jumping a restart to grab the lead on the 10th lap, but then wrecked after rain suddenly slicked turn one on a restart, leaving Bloomquist in the middle of an unexpected pileup. Officials allowed drivers to make repairs — the fifth heat was concluded after the sixth heat — and Bloomquist took the checkered flag first before ending up 2 pounds light at the scales, resulting in a disqualification. Bloomquist's postrace take? “Just another night at the races.”
