Bloomquist was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and grew up in California, where his father worked as a pilot for Air Cal. His introduction to racing came when his father received a race car from a coworker, tried it himself, and ultimately handed the machine to his teenage son Scott. Bloomquist's first race was at Corona Raceway in Corona, California, in August 1980, and he quickly proved his aptitude by claiming the track championship in 1982.
After seeing a photo of Charlie Swartz's flat-wedge car that had won the 1982 Dirt Track World Championship, Bloomquist built a similar machine and entered a $4,000-to-win race in Chula Vista, California in 1983, winning and lapping the field twice. Following that breakthrough, his father brought him east to work on a farm in Tennessee — a move that planted Bloomquist permanently in the heartland of dirt late model racing.
Bloomquist's ascent through Tennessee and the surrounding region was rapid. Racing at Kingsport Speedway's weekly $2,500-to-win events sharpened his skills against established competition. His arrival at Eldora Speedway's prestigious World 100 in 1988 announced him on a national stage: starting seventh as a rookie, he chased down three-time winner Jeff Purvis and won the race. He repeated the feat in 1990, establishing Eldora as his personal showcase.
Through the early and mid-1990s, Bloomquist competed in the Hav-A-Tampa national touring series, winning back-to-back series championships in 1994 and 1995 and accumulating 60 wins during those four seasons — far outpacing the 18 victories managed by the second-place driver over the same period.
In 1997, facing personal difficulties, Bloomquist stepped away from racing temporarily. He returned transformed: he stripped sponsor decals from his car, repainted it in stark black and white, and changed his familiar number 18 to the number 0, placing a yin-yang symbol at its center to represent the balance he had sought. That visual identity became one of the most recognizable in dirt racing.
Bloomquist continued winning at the highest levels into the 2000s. In 2003 he competed full-time in the Xtreme Dirt Car Series (formerly Hav-A-Tampa) and won his fifth national championship. In 2004 he moved to the World of Outlaws Late Model Series and won the season title. His 2006 campaign was especially prolific, producing victories in The Dream ($100,000 purse at Eldora), the Cedar Lake Nationals ($50,000), the Topless 100 ($45,000), the Scorcher 100 and Racefest ($20,000 each), the Dixie Shootout ($15,000), plus nine additional wins in the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series.
Bloomquist won the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series championship in 2009 and defended it in 2010, then finished as series runner-up in 2011 with 15 victories. He claimed another Lucas Oil title in 2016. A motorcycle crash in Daytona Beach, Florida in March 2019 left him with serious leg and hip injuries, limiting his 2019 and subsequent seasons. A prostate cancer diagnosis in 2023 further interrupted his schedule.
In 2002, Bloomquist was inducted into the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame in Union, Kentucky, as part of its second induction class.
In 2003 Bloomquist founded Team Zero Race Cars, a chassis manufacturing company based in Mooresburg, Tennessee. The company built dirt late model chassis that were raced by Bloomquist and other drivers at national level, making him one of the few premier-series competitors to also operate a major chassis brand.
In 2013, Bloomquist entered the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Mudsummer Classic at Eldora Speedway for Kyle Busch Motorsports, starting 21st and finishing 25th after racing without a front sway bar. It remained his only NASCAR Truck Series start. He also had an earlier appearance in the ARCA Permatex SuperCar Series.
Bloomquist returned to limited competition in 2024 at Eldora Speedway, making a bid for his record ninth Dirt Late Model Dream. Contact with Shannon Babb resulted in a crash into the backstretch wall that destroyed the Team Zero car and ended his run.
On August 16, 2024, Bloomquist died at age 60 when his personal vintage Piper J-3 Cub airplane crashed near his home in Mooresburg, Tennessee. He had received flying lessons in his youth but did not hold a pilot's license. A National Transportation Safety Board report released in June 2025 cited the probable cause as intentional flight into a building in an act of suicide. NASCAR Cup Series driver Tyler Reddick, whom Bloomquist had mentored during the early stages of Reddick's career, dedicated his win at Michigan International Speedway the following weekend to Bloomquist's memory.
Bloomquist compiled one of the most decorated careers in American dirt late model history, with multiple national championships across four different series spanning more than three decades. His willingness to continually develop chassis technology — manifested in his own Team Zero brand — and his influence on a generation of racers cemented his standing as a defining figure of the discipline.