CONCORD, N.C. — Scott Bloomquist made it clear when he topped one of Wednesday night’s two qualifying sessions that, if given clean air, he can be an absolute threat behind the wheel of the Team Zero Race Car entry.
But it was difficult for the dirt late model legend to find his groove when facing lapped traffic during Thursday’s Last Chance Showdown. The 59-year-old finished one spot out of a transfer position, despite a late-race effort to pass Ethan Dotson for second.
“Was just way too tight in the heat race, and that put us back,” Bloomquist said. “We just have a little work to do to get a race setup where I can drive behind other cars.”
Bloomquist, who calls Mooresburg, Tenn., home, is certain that he can translate the speed from his qualifying run into his race performance on Friday night, as long as he can find some clean air.
“Being on the outside second row, you get nowhere first lap. If the guys in front of you stay close together, and the guy beside you stays tight with you, you have no air on your car and these cars need to have air to go fast,” explained Bloomquist, who started fourth in both his heat and last chance feature on Thursday.
As he is set to start on the front row during his heat race on Friday, it seems like a direct transfer into the feature may be in order for the Hall of Famer.
In the big picture, it’s only been a month since Bloomquist got back in the seat of a race car. After health issues kept him sidelined most of the year, the World Finals mark Bloomquist’s second weekend in the cockpit.
So far, it’s proven to be quite the challenge.
“I feel really good in the car. But I’ve still got the issue with my foot. We had a 105-pound hunk of steel land on it two days before the race at Eldora, broke a bunch of bones in it and that’s one of the reasons we decided to pull out — it got too rough at Eldora for me to race,” Bloomquist explained.
Though he’s still in a considerable pain, it wasn’t much of a factor for Bloomquist when he received the call from car owner Devin Jones and sponsors, who were asking the Hall of Famer if he’d consider appearing at the World Finals.
“They wanted to see me come, and I thought, yeah, we can do it. We can endure any pain we have to,” Bloomquist said. “We still got a good shot of winning this thing.”
Bloomquist is a three-time winner at the World Finals (2007, ’08, ’09).