Denny Hamlin doing well after knee surgery, plans to run at least part of Sprint Cup race at Phoenix

How long Denny Hamlin stays in his race car during this weekend’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Phoenix International Raceway will be left up to him, according to the physician’s assistant that is overseeing Hamlin’s rehabilitation from recent knee surgery.

“I’m optimistic that he’s going to be able to run at the very least some laps,” Bill Heisel of OrthoCarolina said Wednesday. “I anticipate that he will have some soreness and he will have some swelling. It’s just a matter of seeing how many laps he’s able to run.”

Hamlin underwent reconstructive surgery to replace a torn anterior cruciate ligament March 31. He plans to be back in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 11 Toyota Friday, just nine days after the surgery.

As a precautionary measure, the team has obtained the services of driver Casey Mears to stand by in case Hamlin is unable to remain in the car for the entire event.

“It’s painful – as anyone who has had this surgery or any similar surgery can tell you – but I am working hard to get back my full range of motion and get back to where I need to be,” Hamlin said in a news release. “The actual surgery went very well, no issues and no concerns so I owe big thanks to Dr. [Patrick] Connor and his team. They took good care of me and gave me every opportunity to be back in the car this weekend.

“All I can do now is work hard, follow the rehab program and see how fast I can get back. I have a couple of days yet to see how my knee responds and that will help me make the right decision when I get to Phoenix this weekend.”

Heisel, who assisted with the surgery, is scheduled to be in Phoenix on race day to assist Hamlin and the team, and to address any issues that might arise. Hamlin was scheduled to work with the team Wednesday to practice getting into and out of his car.

Heisel said Hamlin has been having “a little bit of pain, but you would expect that.”

“Basically, we drilled a 10-millimeter hole through his shinbone and into and through his femur,” Heisel said. “That’ll add a little discomfort.”

Hamlin has competed in the first six Cup races this season, and originally hoped to delay surgery until the end of the year. But concerns about possibly doing more damage to the left knee, which he injured during a game of pickup basketball in January, led him to opt for the surgery sooner.

Hamlin won the Cup race at Martinsville March 29, and is 15th in the point standings heading into the Phoenix event.

While his return might seem rushed, Heisel said returning to competition so soon likely won’t hinder any progress Hamlin has made thus far through his rehab efforts.

“I think he’s going to have some swelling, but we fully anticipate that,” Heisel said. “He’s going to be, obviously, in a hot car; he’s going to be sitting and his knee is going to be stiff and a little bit sore.

“I’m not real interested in him taking a head-on collision into the wall. But the bottom line is, we’ve seen that the cars are very, very safe, particularly with regard to impact. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at cars that were involved in significant front-end hits, looking at frames and at firewalls. Looking at how things have kind of all come together, I think he’s going to be very well protected in the car.”

As for his rehab efforts, Hamlin is “exactly where we want him to be at this stage of the game,” Heisel said. “He’s progressing great.

“The early goals of this are, No. 1, to control the swelling and we’ve done that pretty successfully. No. 2, to get his motion going. Right now, he can get his knee completely straight. And we’ve got him bending his knee to a little better than 90 degrees.”

Hamlin has been using a Game Ready therapy device that applies cold and compression simultaneously to control swelling. Heisel said Hamlin, who is currently on crutches, will not wear any type of knee brace while in the car.

“We played with that before his surgery,” Heisel said. “[They] put him in a car with a couple of different braces and put him in a car without a brace. He did not like the feel of the car with the brace on, so our plans are not to run him in any kind of brace this week, just because he doesn’t like the feel of it.

“Right now this graft is as strong as it will ever be. The graft goes through a period of maturation …it will kind of soften up a little bit as it’s in his body. Typically at about the six-week mark it’s a little bit soft, just as the biology of the whole thing goes. At that point in time, it’s enveloped in a really good casing of scar tissue.

“[By then] the tunnels where the graft was passed and placed have basically filled in with new bone. The hardware that’s in there is basically just along for the ride at that stage of the game.”

Hamlin say he has spent much of his time since the surgery working to make the  knee flexible and "to get back my full range of motion.

"To make it stronger while I get more comfortable with what I can and can’t do right now,” he said. “I spend three hours on the machine working on my range and I am making a lot of progress. It gets better every day and I know I am ahead of schedule for a surgery like this.

“I do a lot of work on my back, working my quad and stretching and spend a lot time icing it too. It’s coming around, but it’s a long and hard process and I knew that was going to be the case.”

Hamlin did take Hydrocodone for pain following the surgery, according to Heisel, but is currently taking only anti-inflammatory medicine.

“According to NASCAR, he has to be off of everything eight to 10 hours before the start of an event,” Heisel said. “Our goal is to have him off all the pain medicine well before that.”