(EXCLUSIVE) A Lot About Life A Little About Racing: My Day With Scott Bloomquist By: Brody Sorbera

On a cool October day, I hopped in my car and made the three-hour drive from my home in North Carolina to Mooresburg, Tennessee to talk to a man who has a few nicknames, “Black Sunshine”, “Voodoo Child”, “The Boss”, “Bloomer” and “The Dirt Trax Dominator”. I arrived around 11:30 at his shop/home and he walked out shirtless only wearing some shorts and on the phone, he gave me a quick wave as I awaited him to finish his call, and after that, he told me to hop into his rental car as he needed to return and told me that I’m going not to do a standard interview but spend the day with him as he runs errands and talk a lot about life and a little about racing, a name he came up with by the way.

I should've known that with a guy like Scott this wouldn’t be a typical sit-down interview and Mr. Bloomquist has probably had to sit down through enough of those. Then he announced he had to run an errand and asked me to come with him and I simply had no idea what I was in store for. So I hopped into his rental car and we started driving down a country road, when a pickup truck came close and tried to run us off the road and I got a better look at the driver who turned out to be none other than his former crew chief, Cody who I knew as a kid when my Dad started taking me to the races. I couldn’t tell if it was just friendly banter or they genuinely don’t like each other, I can’t tell with those two sometimes.

We started driving and Mr. Bloomquist was telling me that he was going to influence what I was going to write majorly. I knew this already but the next thing that he told me I was not expecting was that he wished to write an autobiography, from what he said on his appearance on the Dale Earnhardt Jr. podcast and other things he has said throughout his life, his father asked him to wait to write his book until he was dead because his father, Ron Bloomquist told him that he is not sure if he can here anymore even Scott didn’t know what to think of that.

If we could become the higher power and be able to look down on this planet like a massive experiment and every thousand years we were given the power to wipe away everything and start over, who would stop us if we didn’t like what we saw and just decided to get rid of everything and this time give this much information. We as humans are bored easily and desire to want things to end and see the outcome of things we experience. We want to experience new and exciting things. We are gifted with all these senses none of us are going to be remembered in a thousand years so with all of this in mind Scott’s main advice for life is to find something you love and don’t take life to seriously, don’t let anyone “burden you with their bull shit” guilt you into not doing things or experience things you want to.

We start driving for a while and we start talking about the rules of life. Of course, we all know the golden rule, but most people don’t know about the silver rule and the bronze rule, and Scott laid out the Silver Rule in his way, as he put it, “I will treat you, like I want to be treated” and he made it very clear when I first hopped in the car with him that he never wants to scare or make people uncomfortable as he definitely wouldn’t put up with it if it were other way around. If you are wondering what the bronze rule is, “If they are not bothering you, do not bother them”. Scott has stayed consistent in following these rules and never contradicts himself by applying these rules with his morals.

The conversation goes to the spiritual side as we drive down on a beautiful day, and he brings up how people have wanted to know more about why we’re here and what our purpose is, we look for meaning and this is how we build great things but yet we have so many limitations and there is so much we don’t about, for example, our brains malfunction when we try to think of forever as we can’t comprehend certain things so we try to use place holders for things we don’t experience. This may be why most people imagine God as a guy with a white beard in the sky and we both agree that that idea is very shallow his reasoning is a bible verse that he paraphrased but when I found the real thing it was close to what he said which did prove he knew what he was talking about. The bible verse in question comes from (John 17:21) “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you” meaning that we are all part of him or if gender pronouns are even necessary to describe this.

Now my personal belief is that the vast majority of humans have it wrong and will always have it wrong, this may delve into my personal beliefs but Scott built on my statement when he explained how we are surrounded by so many wrongs. With all the problems that most humans have and a lot of it is self-inflicted, we aren't even close to the answers. 70% of the races he participated in he won, he has spent nearly every weekend at a dirt track and he realizes how small it is. There is a whole different universe out there that we don’t even know about doing things completely different, and in 100 years very few people will even know about his existence, very few people can be remembered by many for centuries. As sad as that prospect might be, there is more than being in this world.

Some of this has been my own words, and some of this has been my commentary as this so-called “interview” was a conversation between a legend and a stupid kid that he let tag along with him, some of this may have surprised you as I was surprised, I was going into this thinking we were going to talk about goofy and trivial racing stories and we ended up talking about the universe and the meaning of life. What Mr. Bloomquist was trying to get to is where in life would you rather be a part of the herd, or be a wolf at the mountaintop. In a world that seems to be telling people to “get in line” and not try to achieve anything and stand out, it's important to know that just because you want to be driven towards a goal and want to achieve something that will have you surpass your peers that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are “better” than everyone else because no one is.

According to Mr. Bloomquist, one of the edges he believes he has had over other drivers is he was willing to win at all costs, even if that meant not making friends on the track and even making a few enemies. Other drivers wouldn’t have this determination as they simply treated it like a fun weekend activity while Scott treated every race like war. He even told the story of one time a racer’s wife rudely told him that he would have more friends at the races if he weren’t such an asshole. He simply replied I didn’t come here to make friends I came here to do my job and win the race I have plenty of friends back home. With greatness always come sacrifices and Scott has sacrificed a lot, nearly every weekend for example, but as a result, he has gained so much.

We were almost home and Scott got a phone call from his girlfriend he wanted to call him with me on the line and Scott wanted me to ask her this question, “Why would you date Scott?” just to mess with her. Her short answer was “he’s one of a kind”, she went into how they met and what she likes about him, how there is never a dull moment with him which is certainly something I picked up on right away. I believe I articulated this point throughout this piece; it is not just my view but the view of so many others and that's why simply spending the day with him leaves you with a thousand stories to tell. No wonder so many have followed his career throughout the years.

This kind of capped off my experience with Scott as we arrived back at his place, he had things to do and the day was winding down so before I left I stopped by Scott’s father’s shop on Scott’s property where he builds and flies his planes, cars and even World War I models. I wanted to cover Scott’s background from his perspective. He was born in Iowa and quickly took a love to flying and planes, he married his high school sweetheart and had two kids one of them being Scott, and soon after moved to Anaheim, and took a job at the now-defunct Air California (now apart of American Airlines).

I quickly picked up a theme from this family, that they are hard-working and determined I asked him what Scott was like growing up as my first question and he said he was a tough person to raise which makes sense as “once a rebel, always a rebel”. I asked him when he knew that Scott was going to be a racer and he recounted the story of him taking a teen Scott to the now-defunct Ontario Motor Speedway for a racing program where Scott quickly dominated the competition and that’s when his father knew that he was special. Soon after, they moved to Tennessee and built a hangar and shop and little living quarters that they lived in for 10 years where Scott and his father began building racecars, and within a couple of years as he said “nobody could touch us”. It was a father-and-son team effort at the start and Scott took it and ran with it. His father took the time to brag about his accomplishments like the proud father he was and talked about the projects they were working on which were many. By this point, my time was winding down so I said my goodbyes and thanked them for their time, and headed home.

As I am typing this, I realize I am not the right person to be telling his story, only the man himself is the best person, I am truly just a loose witness but I am very glad to be a part of this journey, I got to spend the day with a racing legend that has inspired so many other dirt drivers trying to achieve greatness but no one I know will have the determination and obsession while at the same time not afraid to be authentically himself as Scott Bloomquist. He is truly one in a million and I was so honored to do this piece and my thanks to the man himself for giving me the time of day.