Scott Bloomquist, a dirt track racer known for his bravado and as one of the sport’s best drivers, died Friday in a plane crash on his family’s farm in Mooresburg, Tennessee, friends and local officials said.
Bloomquist, 60, was known for his long hair and a race car with the number zero and a skull and crossbones on it. He was also known for his victories.
Jerry Caldwell, president and manager of Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, said Friday that Bloomquist “is probably the best dirt Late Model racer in the history of the sport.”
In another tribute, fellow driver Tony Stewart said Bloomquist was “probably the smartest guy I’ve ever known when it comes to dirt racing.”
“What he could do behind the wheel of a race car was matched by the ingenuity he put into building his race cars,” Stewart wrote on social media. “He was a force on and off the track, with a personality as big as his list of accomplishments.”
The plane Bloomquist was flying crashed into a barn, and the remains of the lone occupant are believed to be those of Bloomquist, the Hawkins County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. The National Transportation Safety Board said in its own statement that it is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to investigate the crash of the Piper J3C-65.
Reid Millard, a fellow race car driver and the director of a funeral home in Missouri, said on Facebook that Bloomquist’s mother had asked him to announce the death. “To Scott’s daughter Ariel, his parents, his sister, and to all of you who knew and loved Scott – you are in our hearts and prayers,” Millard wrote.
In dirt track racing, drivers must steer to the right to make the car go left. When cornering, the left front tire lifts off the track and the left rear tire provides traction.
The cars weigh about 2,300 pounds and produce 800+ horsepower. At Eldora Speedway, the Ohio track owned by Stewart, the cars reach top speeds of about 150 mph.
The vehicles have two-speed gearboxes and no windscreens, just short plastic shields to protect drivers from rocks. It can be a rough contact sport.
“Rubbing is racing,” Gerald Newton, president of the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “It’s door to door. You’re throwing it sideways and slinging mud.”
Bloomquist was in the 2002 class of the Hall of Fame. Newton said Bloomquist was like an older brother to him and had known the driver for nearly 40 years. He also designed Bloomquist’s official merchandise as senior vice president at Arizona Sport Shirts.
Bloomquist was born in Iowa and later lived in California, where his father worked as an airline pilot, Newton said. The family wanted to move east and bought the farm in Tennessee.
Newtown said Bloomquist started racing in a car his father bought, but soon lost interest in it and passed the car on to his son.
“He did work for people, made a little money to buy a tire, went and won a race,” Newton said. “He took that money, reinvested it back into the team. The rest is history.”
In addition to winning, Bloomquist became known as arrogant and a bit of a bad boy, Newton said, a persona that was somewhat based on the skull painted in the zero on his race car.
In 2000, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote that Bloomquist “looks like Tom Cruise, drives like Dale Earnhardt and talks like Darrell Waltrip.”
Waltrip was a NASCAR driver who irritated his competitors by beating them on the track and then sticking his mouth out of the car.
“He always said it’s not bragging or boasting if it’s a fact and you can back it up,” Newton said of Bloomquist. “And he did that.”
Newtown said Bloomquist’s accolades “will never be surpassed.”
“The world has lost a great racer, a great friend, a great father,” Newton said. “And heaven has lost a great angel.”
Like many drivers in the sport, Bloomquist suffered several injuries over the years, but he still raced and planned to compete in the World 100 at Eldora Speedway next month.
“He still felt like he could win a race,” Newton said.