Denny Hamlin Update
Hamlin's injury sidelines him for six weeks; Chase hopes in jeopardy
Mar. 27, 2013
By Reid Spencer
NASCAR Wire Service
Only
through an exceptional set of circumstances will Denny Hamlin keep his
perfect record of making the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint
Cup intact, given that a spinal compression fracture is expected to
sideline the Joe Gibbs Racing driver for at least six weeks.
In
a last-lap crash in Sunday's Auto Club 400 at Fontana, Calif., Hamlin
suffered the fracture of his L1 (first lumbar) vertebra, the
uppermost in the lumbar section of the spine. Because of heavy
post-race traffic, Hamlin was airlifted to Loma Linda Medical Center
(near San Bernardino) from the race track and spent Sunday night there.
Released
from the hospital Monday evening, Hamlin flew home to Charlotte and was
evaluated Tuesday by neurosurgeon Dr. Jerry Petty,
according to a statement released Tuesday night by JGR.
"Dr.
Petty determined that Hamlin will not require surgery, but will need
time to properly heal, which is estimated around six weeks
time," the statement read. "Dr. Petty will make the determination when
Hamlin will be able to return to racing this season."
The
absence will put Hamlin's prospects of qualifying for the Chase in
serious jeopardy. The only Cup rookie ever to qualify for the
Chase (2006), Hamlin has been part of NASCAR's playoff in each of his
seven full seasons in the series.
No
replacement has been named to drive Hamlin's No. 11 Toyota Camry, but
one logical candidate would be Elliott Sadler, who drives the
No. 11 Nationwide Series Camry for JGR and who has three victories in
430 starts in the Cup series.
Hamlin
and Joey Logano were racing for the win on the final lap when contact
between Logano's No. 22 Ford and Hamlin's No. 11 Toyota
drove Logano into the outside wall and Hamlin nose-first into the
inside concrete wall near the entrance to pit road. The impact lifted
all four wheels of Hamlin's car off the pavement.
With his back immobilized, Hamlin was flown to the hospital by helicopter.
If
Hamlin is out for six weeks, he will miss five races. That almost
certainly will prevent him from making the top 10 in the standings
on points. Conceivably, Hamlin could qualify as a wild card by winning
multiple races after he returns, but to do so, he would have to finish
the first 26 races between 11th and 20th, inclusive, in the standings.
That's
a tall order, but not impossible. Mark Martin missed nine of the first
26 races last year while running a limited schedule for
Michael Waltrip Racing and nevertheless was 26th in points at the Chase cutoff.
Sunday's
wreck was the second incident involving Hamlin and Logano in as many
weeks. At Bristol seven days earlier, Hamlin had bumped
and spun Logano's car into the wall, but NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
director John Darby didn't view the last-lap accident at Fontana as
payback.
"Probably
the simple fact that it was the last lap of the race and the last time
they were both going to see Turns 3 and 4," Darby explained
in a teleconference with reporters on Tuesday. "They were
side‑by‑side.
"And
everything that great competitors do -- if somebody was of the mind‑set
to retaliate, they probably would have been lined up nose
to tail to start with, and somebody would have drove into the other car
and spun them around. But in this case, that is so far from the
opposite that it never even crossed anybody's mind that I'm aware of
that paid attention to the race, that that was part
of it."
No comments:
Post a Comment