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NASCAR News | April 10, 2010
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Hamlin limping to start of Pepsi 600
By Jay Hart
April 10, 2010
Avondale, AZ — With a slight limp but without the aid of crutches, Denny Hamlin walked through the garage at Phoenix International Raceway, made his way to his car and, facing the rear bumper, lifted his left leg through the driver’s side window, twisted his body and climbed in under his own power. Not bad for being only nine days removed from total reconstructive knee surgery.
Seventy-some laps later, Hamlin was singing a different tune.
“I know as of today there’s no way I could [finish Saturday’s race],” he said.
Saturday night’s Subway 600 will start an hour earlier than in past years. So to make sure the race ends under the lights, PIR has added 63 laps to the event. For most, the extra miles won’t mean much.
“I didn’t know it was longer,” Brian Vickers said Friday when asked what the extra laps will mean.
But for Hamlin, they’re an obstacle.
Though he is walking around under his own power, the action of braking lap after lap with his reconstructed left knee took its toll. Hamlin sounded doubtful about his chances of finishing all 375 laps. He said his doctors will take precautions Saturday morning to get him ready to race – they will drain the knee and remove all stitches – but added that he won’t know how long he’ll go until the race actually begins.
“My goal is to know what I’m going to do before Lap 100,” Hamlin said. “There’s no reason that if I go past Lap 100 to decide to change and abort. You know, I just need to tough it out at that point. … I’ll know early what I’ve got.”
Over the years, NASCAR has had its share of drivers racing while injured. Some were able to finish; others had to give way to a backup driver.
Dale Earnhardt Sr. started the 1996 Brickyard 400 with a broken clavicle and sternum. He drove six laps before getting out of the car. Eight years later, Dale Earnhardt Jr. suffered second-degree burns to his legs, neck and chin in a fiery crash during an American LeMans Series event. A week later, he started the Cup race at New Hampshire International Speedway, but was forced out of the car after 61 laps because the heat was too intense for his burns.
“My burns were bothering me pretty bad,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “I didn’t want to be in the car any more. It felt weird watching my car run around, but we were having such a miserable day anyway it would have really bothered me more if I had a good car. Chances are Denny will have a good car and those are probably difficult to hand over.”
Most famously, perhaps, is the story of Ricky Rudd practicing before the 1984 Daytona 500. Earlier in the week, Rudd was involved in a viscous wreck during what was then called the Busch Clash. In practice leading up to the 500, Rudd suffered through a bout of vertigo and had trouble keeping his eyes open. To compensate, he grabbed a roll of duct tape, ripped off two pieces, attached one end to his eyelids and the other to his forehead, pulled on his helmet and went racing – at 200 mph.
“We’ve all been in that situation, and we’ve all had to make that decision,” Jeff Burton said. “I had to make the decision years ago, but I just couldn’t do it. I had severe vertigo, and I just couldn’t drive. I could do it for a little while, but over a period of time it just got worse and worse and worse, and I finally just had to get out.”
Hamlin has Casey Mears on standby in case he can’t go the distance. As long as Hamlin starts the race, he’ll get whatever finishing points his car earns, which is crucial. Hamlin currently sits 15th in the standings, 24 points out of the top 12.
“It’s frustrating because your mind wants your leg to do one thing, but your body won’t do it,” explained Hamlin, who will start 26th. “It’s a delayed reaction every time I want to do something. I don’t feel like I’m doing my best out there, and that’s frustrating from my standpoint.”
Here are three other storylines to watch for in Saturday night’s Subway 600:
1. Will Juan Pablo Montoya stay out of trouble?
Juan Pablo Montoya has no idea where he sits in the standings; he just knows “it sucks.”
“I know we’re bad because we’re on this side of the garage,” he said Friday at PIR.
Each weekend, NASCAR assigns garage spaces based on where the drivers are in the standings. At PIR, Montoya is parked on the south side of the two-rowed garage – directly opposite points leader Jimmie Johnson.
Six races in, Montoya sits 25th in the standings. While that sounds bad, it’s hardly representative of his performance. The Colombian has led laps in four races, has run in the top10 every week, but unfortunately hasn’t been able to avoid trouble.
He had his engine blow at California, got run into by his teammate at Las Vegas, got caught in a wreck at Bristol and cut a tire at Martinsville – all while running in or near the top 10.
So while he’s facing a 171-point gap between himself and Brian Vickers in 12th, he’s confident (and rightly so) that he can get back in the championship hunt.
“We’re a top-five team, easily,” Montoya said. “We run in the top-five every week. We’re there – always one of the fastest cars in practice, qualifying, even at race pace.
“I think last year it would have been harder [to climb up the standings] because we were finishing like 10th or 12th every week. Now we have cars that can finish in the top five, and I think if you can do that, you can a gain a lot of points pretty fast.”
Montoya qualified seventh.
2. Are the Richard Childress drivers ready to challenge for the championship?
All three RCR drivers – Clint Bowyer, Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick – got off to lightning-quick starts. Harvick sat atop the standings for the first five races, while Burton and Bowyer lingered around the top five.
But they’ve regressed the last two weeks.
Harvick finished outside the top 10 at both Bristol and Martinsville, where he finished a disappointing 35th. That dropped him to fourth in the standings. Burton hasn’t been bad, but he hasn’t been consistently good either, swapping 20ths and 10ths for the last month. And after finishing in the top 10 in the first three races of the season, Bowyer has had finishes of 23rd and 40th.
Not all of those finishes are do to poor performance. Burton had a shot to win at Martinsville, but cut a tire in the closing laps. Harvick led the first 57 laps there, but then headed to the garage with a brake failure. And Bowyer had an engine blow at Bristol.
Those are the easy explanations. But as Burton said Friday, “You are what your record says you are.”
“I think we have the speed to contend for the championship, I think we have the team, and I think we have the fundamental basics to contend and win a championship,” Burton explained. “We have to start executing better than we have.”
Meaning, they have to be better on pit road, can’t have mechanical failures and need to take care of the rest of the intangibles that make the difference between winning and losing.
Right now, they’re winless as an organization. In fact, they haven’t won a race since Oct. 11, 2008. They’ve been in contention plenty since then, but just haven’t finished the deal.
“We were in a great position to win the race at California and didn’t pull it off,” Burton said. “After California everybody said Jimmie was lucky, and yeah he had a lucky break, but they executed and that’s what we haven’t done as well as we need to do. Hopefully in the future we can execute on our opportunities, and that has been our weak point.”
3. Will the Matt Kenseth-Jeff Gordon “feud” persist?
Probably not, but television will surely highlight their spat from two weeks ago at Martinsville.
Both downplayed the incident when asked about it Friday. Kenseth said he doesn’t understand why whenever he’s in some sort of trouble – which isn’t often – it always seems to be with Gordon.
Aside from the Martinsville incident, the two have feuded at Bristol in 2006 when Kenseth spun Gordon (which climaxed with Gordon pushing Kenseth on pit road) and reignited a few months later when Gordon spun Kenseth en route to a win at Chicagoland.
“I always seem to come out on the short end of the stick for some reason, too,” Kenseth said. “I don’t know if it is coincidence or not. After the third or fourth time you start to think it isn’t coincidence, though. I have talked to him at length, and I don’t know if he has a problem with me in particular or what.
Gordon’s response: He has no lingering issue with Kenseth.
“I definitely want him to know that I don’t have anything against him, and I don’t,” Gordon said. “It was pretty plain and simple. If you hit me, I’m going to hit you back. That’s where I leave it. I’m certainly not thinking anything about it. But if he chooses to do something, that’s up to him. That’s just part of racing.”
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