The 2016 NASCAR season is only a couple of weeks away which might be worrisome for fans of Denny Hamlin who is recovering from knee surgery.
NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin said last week that his knee was at about 50 percent. That is good news for him because it means that his knee is making progress but it’s not too good given how close the start of the NASCAR season is. Hamlin recent did a NASCAR question and answer session and his knee progress was talked about.
"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."
Hamlin was also asked about his current rehabilitation as compared to his previous one. Hamlin was not shy about the fact this this injury and recovery was worse than the previous. That being said, he seems to be happy with where he is currently in the rehab process and where he expects to be when he is all healed up.
"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."
Hamlin will be the first one to tell you that the ACL injury was not the reason that he did not return to the final-four in the NASCAR Chase during the 2015 season. While Hamlin will not blame the injury on his performance (which was by no means poor), it’s hard to imagine that he would not have performed better without the injury.
For Hamlin, 2016 will be about more than just overcoming and recovery. 2016 also brings with it a new crew chief and a higher set of expectations for the No. 11 team. Despite winning two races in 2015 and making the Chase, Hamlin will have a new crew chief in 2015. Along with that new crew chief Hamlin will have the added expectations placed on him given his place with Joe Gibbs racing. JGR will come into 2016 viewed as the team to beat in NASCAR and Hamlin is expected to play a big part in that equation.
More racing: Are NASCAR Officials Ruining NASCAR With Their Control
For the sake of Hamlin and Denny Nation, hopefully there aren’t too many bumps in the road in 2016.