Hamlin’s knee at 50%
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| Denny Hamlin |
Q. Saw you last week at the media tour, and you talked about the knee was probably only about 50%. What's the prognosis, and is it getting better this week?
DENNY HAMLIN: "Yeah, it really has, even in the last week. It's been quite a bit better. The biggest thing is the range of motion has not been very good, and it's kind of behind. But we're catching up to being on schedule here, and just in the last seven days, I think it's amazing how far we've gotten in rehab to getting this thing better. I'm very confident that in two weeks it's going to be a non-issue on track, and really for me it's more like when can I start running again. That's the biggest hurdle mentally that we fight through all this is not being able to do some of these activities that we use to kind of take racing off of our mind because once the racing season starts, any given Saturday I'm kind of looking for a golf course after practice is over to relax a little bit, and right now I'm not able to do any of that."
Q. Could you compare this rehabilitation to your previous one?
DENNY HAMLIN: "Well, this one is extensively worse than the first. The best explanation that I get is that the first one I used the cadaver and I needed to get back in the race car right away, so we did a cadaver and we didn't use any parts of my hamstring or any other parts of my leg simply for recovery purposes. It would recover faster, and we didn't think we'd have any injuries to that same leg going forward. But this is kind of a new latest way that they're doing these surgeries. Obviously when players are out in football or basketball, they're out for one year on an ACL, where we don't have that time to recover as race car drivers. Since this has happened in the off-season, they chose to do it this way, which is a little bit longer recovery process, but it should be stronger in the long run. Even if I gain one to two percent more reliability with it, it was worth it to me to go through that extra rehab process to know that it's just going to be a little bit stronger than if I would have done it the other way."
Q. As far as your knee surgery and coming off of that, and like Kyle came off of his surgery and look how great he did, sometimes — it's hard to say you guys try harder, but it seems like when you're down, there's just something about your ability to — for a driver that just seems to come back so much stronger mentally, even working physically to make sure you get it done. Do you have a feeling like that going into this year?
DENNY HAMLIN: Yeah, I mean, I believe so. There's something to it for sure. I mean, every time that something has happened with myself, it seems like the races that proceed at your level are just raised slightly and your performance seems to be a little bit better. You know, what it is I'm not sure. I don't know if it's determination or what have you, but Kyle was another prime example of that. Once again, another one I can think about is when Brad, when he busted his foot up a few years ago at a road course during testing, he won his first race not too long after that. It's just whatever it may be that we find within us to perform at a high level, it always seems to happen when we're injured. A lot of it probably is because we don't want to be the weak link. We don't want to be the one that is responsible for our team running bad, so we make sure we do all it takes to run good." NASCAR
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| Denny Hamlin |
01/20/16
Denny Hamlin still is struggling to get back to his old self after surgery Nov. 30 to repair his right ACL, which he injured playing basketball the week before the Chase for the Sprint Cup. He says he is able to get in and out of a car and will be ready for the Daytona 500 when the Cup season kicks off Feb. 21.
"I wish it was a little bit better. … I definitely can get in the car and do what I need to do right now, but I think the challenge of getting in the car was the toughest part. Once I get my range of motion back, it'll be fine," Hamlin said.
"I am about 50 percent, but nothing that would keep me out of the race car. I'm not where I want or should be right now, but I'm getting there. I went on vacation, that sort of set me back a little bit." USA Today