An empty grandstand for an event at Eldora Speedway wasn’t the only decidedly strange aspect of the Dirt Late Model Stream Invitational.

As the field for Saturday’s 67-lap feature formed into a four-wide parade lap, there was an equally unusual sight in the pit area: Hall of Famer Scott Bloomquist standing alone at the back door of his trailer, dressed in street clothes and sipping from a can of beer after falling well short of transferring in a B-main to end a truly miserable weekend during which he failed to qualify for all three features.

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Bloomquist, 56, of Mooresburg, Tenn., has enjoyed unmatched success in Eldora’s crown jewel events since capturing the 1988 World 100 in his debut at the famed track, including winning the Dream a record eight times and the World 100 on four occasions. He has experienced some crushing moments as well — a last-lap World 100 loss to Brian Birkhofer in 2002, his infamous weekend-ending hot-lap wreck in ’05, weighing in light to lose the Dream’s $100,000 prize in ’14, missing last year’s Dream with another fail at the scales after winning a heat race — but never before had he been such a non-factor for an entire weekend as he was for the Stream Invitational.

When Bloomquist was asked if this ranked as his worst trip ever to Eldora for a major event, he didn’t hesitate to answer in the affirmative.

“Oh, absolutely,” Bloomquist said. “There’s no question.”

From the start of the weekend to its finish, Bloomquist was, in an entirely rare Eldora occurrence, almost invisible. On Thursday he timed 35th out of 48 entries after scrambling to repair problems from hot laps and fell four spots short of transferring in a B-main. On Friday he was 40th fastest of 43 qualifiers and finished a dismal 12th in a consolation. He never threatened to make the cut for Saturday’s finale, ultimately missing a berth by four positions in a B-main.

There wasn’t even a tinge of Bloomquist’s Eldora magic, no episodes that will go down in history — unless the superstar never being in the mix at the track he loves so much counts as memorable.

To provide context for Bloomquist’s performance, consider just how impressive his Eldora statistics are over his career. He’s failed to qualify for the Dream headliner just four times in 25 years (2000, ’03, ’16, ’19) and missed the World 100 finale just twice in 31 attempts (1999 and 2005; he didn’t enter the ’16 event while serving a DIRTcar suspension for a tire infraction at that year’s Dream). Overall he has 12 victories, 26 podium finishes, 32 top-fives and 41 top-10s in 50 combined Dream and World 100 feature starts — a remarkable resume on such a big stage.

But Bloomquist never got rolling at the first — and hopefully last — Stream Invitational.

“We’ve chased problems since we got here,” Bloomquist said, noting how his self-built Team Zero car overheated after Thursday’s hot laps because a belt was knocked when it bottomed out. “We finally got that fixed and then we were having with the engine surging on us and not running down the straights. We finally chased that down and got that part of it fixed, but it’s just been one thing after another.

“It got us chasing the car a little bit too much. Standard stuff, you know, is really not gonna work (at Eldora).”

Bloomquist couldn’t deny that his weekend was a giant ball of frustration.

“Yeah, yeah, it is,” he said. “I just know where we should be. Obviously, we just ended up chasing too many problems, got ourselves behind and never could catch back up.

“But I don’t know … there’s something with this particular car. We’re just gonna home, strip it down and just double-check everything on the frame and make sure there’s not something wrong. I think we’re probably gonna find something, something’s out on it.”

From a chassis builder’s standpoint, the weekend was actually quite uplifting for Bloomquist. He was lone driver among seven Bloomquist Race Car entries in the field who didn’t make the big show, and four of the top seven finishers in the Stream — Dale McDowell (third), Chris Ferguson (fifth), Ricky Weiss (sixth) and Shannon Babb (seventh) — were Team Zero members. In addition, Nick Hoffman finished 17th with his Bloomquist car while Chris Madden, who runs a Scott Bloomquist Racing machine as a teammate to Bloomquist, appeared primed for a run at the $50,000 top prize after earning the pole position for the feature but was unable to start it due to electrical trouble that prevented him from firing the engine in the pit area.

Of course, with Bloomquist’s struggles standing out among his Team Zero squad and coming after he experienced an abbreviated, pain-filled 2019 season in the wake of the serious right hip, knee and ankle injuries he suffered in a March motorcycle accident, many in the Dirt Late Model world pointed to his performance as a sign that his skills behind the wheel might be on the decline. The driver who’s in the division’s GOAT conversation didn’t agree with such an assessment, however. He might be in a slump this year — he has just two top-five finishes in 13 World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series starts and sits a dismal eighth in the points standings — but he said he’s feeling better physically than he has in over a year after undergoing hip replacement surgery in January and is confident he’ll regain his intimidating mojo.

“I know better” than to believe people questioning his abilities, Bloomquist said. “I ain’t never listened much to what anybody said anyway. I’m just gonna go home, get a new car put together and we’ll be back. I ain’t worried about it.”

There was one other factor that could have perhaps played a role in Bloomquist’s forgettable Eldora visit: the barren bleachers and campgrounds due to coronavirus concerns. Bloomquist always is the center of attention during an Eldora weekend, his pit stall swarmed by fans, his every move on the track under a microscope and the announcement of his name drawing a roaring mix of cheers and boos.

Bloomquist admitted that the absence of the Eldora throngs had an effect, though he couldn’t explain away his failings that easily.

“It’s hard to, it’s hard to,” he said when asked if he had trouble getting motivated without the usual electric Eldora atmosphere in the air. “I think the crowd definitely plays a part. I just feel like I’m at a test session, you know?”

But Bloomquist also looked on the bright side of his poor results coming during a spectator-free event.

“I mean, I don’t know how many are watching it, but it would’ve been a lot worse if the place was full of people,” he said. “It’d hurt a lot worse if the grandstands were full.”