March 28, 2010
By Kim Roberson
Kim Roberson
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Driving with an injury is tough, and many of the men and women we see race in NASCAR’s various series each week do their very best to keep as injury free as possible during the race season. However, every once in a while, a driver will do something in the off season that carries over into the season, and they either work though until the injury heals, or have to get a fix that can impact their racing ability during the season.
Back in 1984, Ricky Rudd taped his eyes open with duct tape so he could run the Daytona 500 with a concussion. In 1999, Bobby Labonte broke his shoulder and still raced. I don’t have enough room here to list the number of injuries Dale Earnhardt Sr. allegedly raced through over his long career.
In recent years, it was Tony Stewart breaking his shoulder in a crash in Charlotte; Jimmie Johnson falling off the top of a golf cart and breaking his wrist; Denny Hamlin goofing off on a race weekend and slicing open his hand; Jimmie Johnson slicing open a finger and damaging a tendon using a knife to repair his uniform during the Rolex race; Carl Edwards getting his thumb caught in the steering wheel of a dirt car and breaking that thumb, and then last year, breaking his foot in a bizarre Frisbee incident. This year, it was Denny Hamlin tearing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) of his left knee playing basketball before the season started.
When the injury originally happened, Hamlin said he could race the season and then worry about having surgery to repair the damaged ligament in December. That has changed, however, and the driver of the No. 11 FedEx Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing will instead have surgery tomorrow.
“Since I initially tore my ACL, the rest of the knee was fine; there was nothing else wrong with it. Now it seems like we have now cracked the meniscus, and if that goes what will happen is the knee will completely lock up and then I’ll HAVE to get it done. So it’s best for me to limit my time out of the race car and do it in an off week just take that week, take my lumps that first week, and get back in the car as soon as I can,” Hamlin explained on Friday after announcing the plans for surgery. As for the length of his recovery, Hamlin says it can vary depending on each person and the procedure itself. “We’re going to do the cadaver graph so it’s going to be a false piece that they will add in there. It just depends on how your body handles it (as to how long the recovery will take).”
J.D. Gibbs, president of Joe Gibbs Racing, said they met with Denny and discussed the situation, and decided there was no reason to put off the surgery for another nine months. “When we first reviewed the situation we thought Denny couldn’t do any further damage to his knee if he waited to have surgery, but as the season progressed we determined that the best plan of action was to go ahead and have it repaired.”
Dr. Patrick Connor, an arthroscopic surgeon based in Charlotte, N.C., is set to do the surgery tomorrow, assuming NASCAR can work around Mother Nature’s rain today and get the race in as scheduled.
“He says that I’ll be able to get in the car at Phoenix —- there’s no doubt that I’ll be able to do it. It’s just the tolerance of pain is going to be the limiting factor. I’m not going to do any further damage to it once it’s done. So it’s going to be strictly pain limited.”
In case the pain is too much to bear after starting the race, Joe Gibbs racing has enlisted the assistance of Casey Mears to act as relief driver for Hamlin. “Obviously they need someone on standby in case he can’t (complete the race), and I can hop in and finish the races for him,” Mears explained on Saturday. He intends to spend time at the JGR shops this week in an effort to map out plans for the best way for him to get into the car if Hamlin needs to get out, and get to know the crew he would be working with should the need arise.
For Hamlin’s part, he said he really didn’t want to do the surgery because “I didn’t want to seem like a wuss or anything like that,” but the pain and worry about doing further damage to the knee that could result in long term issues won out over whether he was being a wuss or not.
As for moderating the pain, he has done it by sheer willpower and nothing else. He has not, and does not intend to, take any pain medication because he "didn't want to have anything that I was going to get used to."
Hopefully Mother Nature will allow the race to at least get to half way today so that Denny can have his surgery as scheduled. Right now, things are looking iffy at best as to whether we will even get the race started, but as we have seen in years past, you never quite know what Mother Nature will bring when it comes to race day.
Speaking of injuries, I want to send out my best wishes to Larry Pearson and Charlie Glotzbach. For those who happened to miss the crash last week during Bristol’s “Scotts Saturday Night Showdown”, it was a very violent crash involving two older racers in cars that are not built to the safety standards we have become used to in recent years. On Lap 30 of the 35-lap event at Bristol Motor Speedway, Pearson spun and hit the outside wall. As his car drifted back down the track, it was T-boned on the driver’s side by Glotzbach, who apparently didn’t know that Pearson was on his way down the track. Both cars then slid down together against the inside retaining wall, and it was clear that crash had been much worse than even we thought. Crew members were waving frantically for medical crews, and both drivers were apparently knocked unconscious. Glotzbach was able to be gingerly removed from his car after a few minutes, but it took cutting the roof off of the car Pearson was in and a back board to get him out of the mangled wreckage.
Glotzbach, who is 71 years old, was released from the hospital mid week. Pearsons, who is 56, has undergone three surgeries, one for a broken left leg in Tennessee, and one for a broken right leg and one for his shattered pelvis in Charlotte. He was transferred from the Wellmont Bristol Regional Medical Center in Tennessee on Monday to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, where he is expected to remain hospitalized for another two weeks as he recovers from the broken legs, shattered pelvis, two broken ribs a and broken right hand.
Glotzbach told Sirius NASCAR Radio this week, “That’s the hardest hit that I’ve ever taken, and that was the first ride to the hospital from a race. I mean, all the walls I’ve hit, and wrecked, and I never got hurt. That was the first time I ever got hurt. So it had to be a hard, hard hit.” As far as his injuries, he said “I’m sore. My sternum’s broke. I got some bruised ribs, and the lower back, uh, there’s a bone cracked down there a little bit or something. They said there were some old wounds down there, too. But, like I said, I never went to hospital for nothin’ (back in the day).”
So many fans have talked about how great it would be to have a “Seniors Race tour” to allow the drivers of days past to come out and race against each other in cars that harkened back to the “good old days”. I think the crash last weekend indicates why that is a very bad idea. What really amazed me when I saw the drivers sitting inside of their cars last weekend is that they didn’t have HANS devices, didn’t have the safety seats that we see cocoon the current drivers. They were in cars much like they had raced “back in the day”, and the end result was a crash that led to injuries often received “back in the day.”
While I enjoy watching the Seniors Tour in the PGA, I think last weekend’s crash just re-emphasized why having one in NASCAR is not a good idea. Let our legends come to the races and be seen by fans and enjoy watching from the comfort of a good seat with a good beverage and friends. Let’s not put them out there where they could be maimed or killed just for our enjoyment.
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