The Blue Knight, #73, was owned by Westerly, RI, based Pat Doherty. The race car started life as Bob Potter’s original yellow #51 owned by Henry Olscewski and later sold to Doherty. As the Blue Knight, it was wheeled by Donnie Bunnell at the Waterford Speedbowl, winning numerous races for car owner Doherty.
Scott Poirier, now the driver of the Blue Knight and owned by wife Judy, started his racing career in the #66 with Jay Stuart in 1978; later owning his own team in 1980. Scott is thankful to all the owners that gave him rides throughout the years and helped him in his racing career.
During the early 80s, Poirier was a Waterford Speedbowl Tech Inspector for a couple of years in the Late Model division – increasing the number of winners from single digits to double digits during that time.
Poirier also raced in each of the past five decades winning a championship at Stafford Speedway in 1986, Rookie of the Year in the Late Model and SK Modified divisions at Waterford Speedbowl along with numerous wins at local Connecticut tracks. In the NASCAR Modified Tour division he competed as far north as New Hampshire Speedway, Loudon, NH and as far south as Nazareth Speedway, Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.
In 1990 Poirier appeared on the cover, and was profiled, in the February edition of Stock Car Racing Magazine. He took pride in maintaining his cars, as a student of Art Barry, which was recognized when he won “Outstanding Engineering and Fabrication” over 27 divisions at the Big E in Springfield, Massachusetts during Racearama. He remembers riding his bike for miles to visit the Spearpoint Auto Shop just to get to sweep the #21 garage floor of the Barry built Spearpoint Modified ra
ce car.
In the pits Poirier was known as “Parts Store Poirier” always being prepared and willing to help his fellow racers – which included loaning his “Poirier built” motor to a competitor which allowed the competitor to cinch the championship from Poirier by 2 points – how’d that work out???
Scott says, “My biggest career trophy was when I went to Martinsville [Virginia] and found my wife in ‘79”.
Scott now enjoys Vintage Modified racing with New England racers, traveling to many of the New England race tracks. In vintage racing he is the 2013 NEAR Champion; and also the 2014, 2015 and 2016 Senior Tour Auto Racers (STAR) Champion. His biggest enjoyment is meeting his racing heroes in person after following their careers as a kid.
By Judy Poirier