One trip to the drag strip was all the inspiration Lewis Bloom needed to become a drag racing addict. Growing up eight miles from the sounds of Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ, the ten year old kid who would later become the official ESPN drag racing statistician, used to hear the sounds of the strip emanate every time he played tennis with his friends.
He really didn’t know what was making those strange sounds.
The young Bloom asked his father for clarification, and the response was, “I think there’s a race track, do you want to go?”
On May 2, 1970, his eleventh birthday, Bloom received the present that would forever influence his life. The elder Bloom took him to the drag strip.