Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin will undergo surgery on Monday to repair the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.
The surgery will be performed by Dr. Patrick Conner with OrthoCarolina in Charlotte, NC. Hamlin tore his ACL while playing basketball prior to the start of the Sprint Cup Series season. MiamiHerald.com
Despite being scheduled to undergo serious knee surgery next week, Denny Hamlin says his Sprint Cup championship hopes remain alive.
If Sunday’s Sprint Cup race at Martinsville Speedway is postponed by weather to Monday – a considerable possibility if weather forecasts are correct, the surgery would be rescheduled for Tuesday.
There is no Sprint Cup race scheduled next weekend, so Hamlin would have 12 days to rest the knee before attempting to drive at Phoenix International Raceway in the seventh race of the season April 10.
On Saturday, Hamlin said driver Casey Mears has been hired as his standby in case he needs a substitute or an in-race replacement during the recovery period. Hamlin said he hopes he won’t miss any races and that the recovery period will be over by the fall, when he hopes to be competing in the Chase for the Sprint Cup. He is currently 19th in points.
Hamlin said he will be on crutches at least until practice for the Phoenix race begins.
“From there, we’ll just kind of see where our range of motion is and things like that,” he said. “As long as they can just pry me in that seat, they’ll have a tough time prying me out.” FOX News
Hamlin has gotten off to a poor start after entering the season viewed as one of the drivers likely to challenge four-time champion Jimmie Johnson in the points race.
He’ll start Sunday’s race 19th in the standings, but with the hope that his past success on the 0.526-mile oval will continue and get his season moving in a positive direction.
Hamlin is the only driver other that Johnson to win in the last seven races at Martinsville, and said “there’s no chance” he will use a relief driver in Sunday’s race.
Hamlin said he never took pain medication after injuring the knee, and he doesn’t plan to after surgery because he “didn’t want to have anything that I was going to get used to.” The Associated Press
While Hamlin admitted he has been in more pain than he has been letting on during the first five weeks this season, crew chief Mike Ford said Hamlin has kept it to himself.
“I don’t talk to him about that. It’s kind of out of sight, out of mind. In the car, he hasn’t complained one ounce about it,” Ford said. “But also, that’s on him. It was of his own doing.”
Obviously, Hamlin planned the surgery prior to a rare off week for the Sprint Cup Series. Hamlin also admitted that short-track racing, such as last week at Bristol and this weekend at Martinsville where a driver must get on and off the clutch and brakes more often than at bigger tracks, played a role in convincing him that he could put off the surgery no longer.
“When I did initially tear my ACL, the rest of my knee was completely fine; there was nothing else wrong with it,” Hamlin said. “Now it seems like we’ve now cracked the meniscus [cartilage] and if that goes, then what will happen is the knee will completely lock up and then you have to get [the surgery] done. So it’s best for me to limit my time out of the race car by doing it on an off week. Just take that week and take my lumps that first week and then get back in the car just as soon as I can.
“For me, it was more fearing long-term [damage] and if something further goes wrong. With not having [had it repaired earlier], there’s nothing else around the knee to support it, so I’ve done further damage [since the initial injury]. I noticed that after the Bristol race it was as achy as it had been and hurt pretty good. The best thing is to just get it over with.” NASCAR
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