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Originally posted by Stede Bonnet
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I use to have a news clipping on that saved on my hard drive, if i find it I'll post it. Best I can remember it was a lot of things, both internal friction and outside forces. They are still friends today, but Scott from what I remember just wanted to make a clean break and start fresh. In the late 80's Bloomquist swept onto the national scene in a Mastersbilt leafcar and took the DLM world by storm, thrusting himself onto the map as well as Mastersbilt becoming a nationally known brand. I want to say this lasted thru 1990. 91'-92' he switched to Warrior and put them on the map as well winning races all over the map. It got so bad some car owners would try and determine where he was gonna run and go someplace else. Somewhere during this time was Bloomquist's infamous drug bust after partying with a girlfriend at his place.1993 rolls around and Bloomquist lands J&J Steel as a sponsor and announces he will be teaming with Barry Wright Race cars, already a nationally known brand from the NDRA era. In that press announcement Bloomquist stated that from the beginning of his career he had wanted to team up with Barry and hit the road and with J&J as a sponsor that was now possible. 1993, 94', & 95' were unbelievable years, Hav-A-Tampa Series was booming, Late model racing was riding a resurgence after NDRA imploded and all seemed well and then came 1996... Beginning in 1996 Scott/Barry wanted to expand the team and brought Ronnie Johnson in to be his team mate, but there were some kinks. First Scott had been tearing up the competition week-in and week-out for 3 years on the HAT tour, but some other teams stepped up too. GVS teamed with Billy Moyer, GRT had Wendell Wallace and Dale McDowell and Freddy Smith started up a new team with Clayton Christianberry, all very well funded, well prepared and professional, providing more depth to the tours competition. Freddy came out swinging and he and Bloomquist wrestled for the point lead most of the year. The hope for BWRC that teaming the Chattanooga Flash with Bloomquist would make them a juggernaut, but it didn't go down that way exactly. The funding wasn't exactly enough to competitively fund 2 cars or have enough help and they struggled. At times they seemed on the verge of breaking out, but the season got away from them. Then suddenly calls from the officials seemed to be picking on Scott(he thought so) and finally effectively handed the title to Freddy after another questionable call. it seemed that the series/sport that had once welcomed him had now grown bored with his domination. Finally to make matters worse, his drug case was still hanging over him, most everything got thrown out, but it was dragging on. At the conclusion of 1996 the writing was on the wall and they knew trying to run 2 cars again for 1997 would only put them further behind, so all parties agreed it was best they part ways with RJ and return to a single car team.Now 1997 rolls around and they have a new design car that isn't quite as fast as they wanted it and then to add insult to injury, one day at Barry's shop Scott saw a customers car that had some of his proprietary tech on it and to him it seemed like yet another violation of trust. Finally it was all too much and they agreed to part ways part way into 1997. It was at this point Scott had grown tired of fighting the court case and agreed to a plea deal and served his time with special arrangements. When he reappeared it was in a plane Black/White Rayburn, no more J&J, with his now trademark ying-yang on the door, surrounded by small 18's and wearing a beret(sp?) of sorts. He hadn't planned on changing his number to zero, but the score person scored him driving the zero and he went with it.(He talks about this in a magazine interview he did in Dirt Late Model Magazine.
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