Jimmy Blewett suspended for remainder of 06 season

openwheelracer · Admin/Mod/Eyewitness

Jimmy Blewett suspended for remainder of 06 season

MandyB · Stafford's Turn 1 "Princess"

And it's up on my blog as well. (Just posted it.) Now here's the moment I was anxiously awaiting. I buy the entire "actions detrimental to auto racing" thing. Honestly, he could have backed off the throttle when he lost the lead. He didn't have to go all out like he did.

chris16x · Spotter

wow kind of surprised they such dramatic actions by suspending him for the rest of the season, its a shame blewett is a good kid and that team brings money into the track

RacerGirl76 · Crew Member

TS - has car, needs driver

TC - driver, needs car

WhelenModifiedTour · WMT Moderator

Very good points Racergirl.

Ben Althen · Moderator

Reports have JB III in the car the rest of the year. As for TC, he and Eddie haven't really seen eye-to-eye in the past with Bo driving so I doubt that would happen.

Date: Tue Jun 13 22:41:11 2006

watch the video on yankee racer. it was blatant and a well deserved punishment.

i am not a frank fan (or hater) but notime deserves to be kicked out, he's a menace and frank could have been hurt.

openwheelracer · Admin/Mod/Eyewitness

I have been sitting here all day wondering whether I should add my two cents to all of this so what the heck here goes.

Anybody who was there, or saw the video on Yankeeracer.com can pretty much come to their own conclusion about the incident. Not to much of anyway you can come to Blewett's defense. Yes Ruocco did squeeze him off turn 4 a bit just prior, and did do a "bump an run" on him to win the Waterford Bud Nats 150 a few months ago but I don't think either are a reason to send a guy for a drivers door shot into the turn 1 wall at Stafford.

With the punishment I think SMS is definitley sending a message, but here is my question. And first off I want to say I'm not saying Blewett doesn't deserve the year off for his actions, and also that I'm not saying Ruocco and his team don't deserve some "justice" and I guess I'm kinda "callin out" SMS on this but, would the punishment have been as severe if Blewett had did it to say, Curt Brainard?

All the past long term suspensions have involved at least one high profile driver, Jones on TC, Civali on TC. Let's be honest while maybe not as severe, we have all seen one of the "big guns" send an Osella or a Brainard (Not knocking these guys just have seen them get the short end of the stick once or twice) for a ride and nothing much came of it. Or we have seen guys from 15th on back trying to destroy each other and not get much more than a drive thru penalty.

As I have said before, I don't think at times SMS is doing a bad thing with handing out suspensions and penalties, but I think sometimes there not viewed seriously because there not the same straight across the board for everyone.

MandyB · Stafford's Turn 1 "Princess"

openwheelracer wrote:

would the punishment have been as severe if Blewett had did it to say, Curt Brainard?

Depends on if Blewett did the same thing to him. I would say probably.