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The racing community is mourning the loss of dirt track icon Scott Bloomquist who was killed in a small plane crash in Tennessee on Friday.
A friend of Bloomquist said on Facebook that the racing legend crashed at around 7:15 a.m. while flying his vintage airplane on his family’s farm. Bloomquist was 60 years old.
“God’s speed Scott. May you fly high on an Eagle’s wing forever,” friend Reid Millard wrote on Facebook.
Bloomquist won the 94 Lucas Oil Late Model and 33 World of Outlaws Late Model races. Recently, he came in first place at Thunder Mountain Speedway in Knox Dale, Pennsylvania in 2020.
The beloved racer placed top five at Schaeffer’s Oil Spring Nationals Series race in Tazewell, Tennessee.
He was inducted into the National Dirt Racing Late Model Hall of Fame’s in 2002. He was part of the second class of inductees.
Bloomquist moved from California to Tennessee in the 1980s to pursue a career in dirt racing.
“Sad to hear of the tragic passing of one of the greatest that ever drove a dirt late model. Scott and I were rivals for many years but we both always had great respect for each other as competitors,” Rocket1 Racing founder Mark Richards posted on X.
Richards said it is “hard to believe.”
“I remember the first time I saw him race in 1983 at Kingsport Speedway,” Richards wrote. “I knew that day he was different. I am glad that Scott and I had many conversations in the past few years to verify the respect we both had for each other. The racing world lost one of the best to ever do it today.”
Newsweek reached out to the Hawkins County Sheriff’s Office for more information.
Bloomquist is not the first loss the racing community has experienced this year.
Lizzy Musi, 33, died of breast cancer on June 28. Musi was one of the top female street racers and she appeared on the reality show “Street Outlaws: No Prep King” on Discovery.
She scored three consecutive wins on the show and she was the first woman to break the barrier of 200 mph in eighth-mile doorslammer racing with a 3.802-second run.
Musi was diagnosed with stage 4 triple-negative breast cancer last year.
She was in a relationship with Jeffrey Earnhardt, the grandson of NASCAR star Dale Earnhardt.
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