Scott Bloomquist believes that he and his team are poised for a great season in 2014.
It’s not exactly breaking news to point out that Scott Bloomquist is in the process of putting together an excellent season in the ranks of Dirt Late Model racing. After all, the Mooresburg, Tenn. driver has a collection of hundreds of race winning trophies, and he is coming off a yet another Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series victory this past Saturday night at the ArkLaTex Speedway in Vivian, LA.
“I feel like we’ve been real good,” Bloomquist declared during a recent telephone interview. “We’ve had a few little problems that have cost us maybe two or three wins, but we’ve been working with Roush Yates and Andy Durham with engines to get things worked out. They’ve got the new RY45 and we’ve had some carburetor issues. We were qualifying fast time at a bunch of shows but then in the heat races we wind up getting beat because the carburetor just wasn’t quite kicking off the way it needed to. But we’ve got all of that fixed finally and things are rolling pretty good now. I think we’ll have a great season.”
Saturday night was the former LOLMDS champion’s first time at ArkLaTex, but it was not his first time in pulling off a win on his initial visit to a track.
“We’re over 70% and it goes all the way back over my entire career,” Bloomquist said of his winning percentage on first time visits to speedways. “Even at the World 100 when we went there for the first time and won that race. I guess I just love a challenge.”
Currently, Bloomquist sits second in the NDRL standings, just behind fellow Bloomquist Race Cars driver Chris Madden. He also ranks sixth in the LOLMDS standings despite having missed the season’s opening race.
“We have the ability, with the way they scheduled with each other, to run both,” Bloomquist says of the two national tours. “We missed the first Lucas race. We made it to the track but the consi was already lined up when we got there. We had a couple of flat tries on the truck trying to get down there. Normally they give hardship points, but the other drivers voted not to give us those hardship points. That’s their choice, I guess.
“We’d be higher up there if not for that,” the driver added of his position in the LOLMDS standings. “It’s definitely not out of reach because we’re only a couple hundred points out and I’ve made that up in a couple weeks in the past. We’re just going to stick with it and see how things pan out. You’ve got to have some form of luck, but a lot of times, preparation makes for good luck so we’re just going to keep working hard.”
Scott Bloomquist’s #0
Midway through 2013, Bloomquist entered into a partnership with Randy Sweet of Sweet Manufacturing to handle the production of his Bloomquist Race Cars. The National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame member believes that pairing has allowed him to refocus on the driving aspect of his career.
“Last year, we didn’t really do much as far selling cars goes,” Bloomquist explained. “I kind of stopped selling cars and focused on the new design that I was working on. I’ve redesigned my fuel cells and I’ve redesigned the chassis and a number of other things on the car.”
And more than just rearranging the business side of his life, Bloomquist has entered into other partnership that he believes will benefit his on track performance.
“We started working with Penske Shocks and that was another learning curve. I feel like we’ve got some great shocks now and some things the car really likes. Penske is the number one shock company in the world in high performance racing. I knew when we got together it was just going to be a matter of time, but there’s always learning curves and I was willing to do whatever it took to try to get a big jump ahead again. I think people are about to see what our potential really is right now.”
