Scheduled knee surgery turns into a celebration (NASCAR.com)
March 29, 2010
On Lap 506, Denny Hamlin was fourth. On Lap 508, he was heading to Victory Lane.
Denny Hamlin had hoped to spend the latter part of Monday beginning the first stages of his recovery from surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.
Instead, spending it celebrating in Victory Lane at Martinsville Speedway worked for him quite a bit better. In a wild one reminiscent of other memorable finishes at the storied half-mile track, Hamlin stormed from fourth to first in the final green-white-checkered melee—winning for the first time this season on an afternoon when it seemed at first glance as if wily crew chief Mike Ford had given it away.
Hamlin, who led a race-high 172 laps, was setting the pace for the field when Jeff Burton, who had battled him up front most of the day, had a right-front tire go down and hit the outside wall to bring out the caution flag on Lap 493 of the scheduled 500-lap event. That left Ford with a difficult decision. Should he bring the leader in for fresh tires with less than 10 laps remaining, or let him stay out and maintain the most precious track position a driver can possess?
Knowing Hamlin was operating on old, slick tires that had 65 laps on them, Ford opted to have Hamlin come in and get four fresh ones. Kyle Busch, his Joe Gibbs Racing teammate who was running second at the time, followed Hamlin’s No. 11 Toyota to the pits … and none of the other top cars did.
“Those are the worst calls ever. That’s the situation you hate the most,” Ford said. “The thing during the day that you want to do is put a lot of cars down [a lap], so it makes that decision easy. And there were still 18 cars on the lead lap at the end of the day, which is quite a few for here. You know some of those are going to stay out—because that is their shot to win. You know some of them are going to come if a few guys come in front of them.
“In this series, that is the hardest decision to make. Inside of 10 [laps remaining], what do you do? The leader, you can bet that his shot to win the race goes both ways, so everyone else does the opposite of what he does.”
It looked at first as if the two JGR cars had just handed Monday’s victory to Jeff Gordon, who had been running third and suddenly, unexpectedly, inherited the lead.
“I told Mike, for the record, that I never doubted him,” JGR team president J.D. Gibbs said. “Off the record, up on the pit box, I was cussing him.”
Surprise, surprise
Gordon later confessed surprise that the cars of Hamlin and Kyle Busch pitted to take on tires. Busch, who took only two right-side tires, came out of the pits ahead of Hamlin, who took the four and started in the 10th position on the restart that followed on Lap 496.
“We didn’t expect them to come in,” Gordon said.
When he saw Hamlin starting “to peel off there,” Gordon said to crew chief Steve Letarte: “They’re pitting.”
Letarte’s immediate reply was, “You stay out.”
Gordon later added: “There wasn’t even a second thought for us. If we had come in, we certainly weren’t going to win the race. The only chance we had to win the race was to stay out. I was pretty happy when I saw how many other guys stayed out. That definitely was a big plus for us.”
It certainly seemed that way when, with Hamlin and Busch trapped back in traffic and only four scheduled laps remaining, Gordon suddenly had the lead at a track where he had won seven times previously, but not since 2005. Even with Hamlin driving up through the field like a mad dog, Gordon proceeded to hold everyone off until he was within 100 feet of completing Lap 499 and taking the white flag that would have assured him victory.
Then all heck broke loose. Busch, running three-wide, got squeezed into the outside wall and turned around—ruining his day when he had carefully raced and stayed out of trouble for nearly four hours. The often-emotional Busch was none too pleased.
“We could have won the race if we had stayed out!” he screamed on the radio, following that with an emphatic expletive to further stress the point.
Instead, the dynamics of the finish were instantly altered in a way no one could have predicted. The subsequent caution period that began on what was supposed to be the final lap of the day meant there would be at least one attempt at a green-white-checkered finish.
“Wild and crazy”
Hamlin was up to fourth and knew he would start on the outside of Row 2, behind Gordon and Ryan Newman on the front row. Hamlin thought he knew what to expect—sort of. Gordon said he knew it “was going to be wild and crazy.”
And it was. This time Gordon was in a more vulnerable position.
“When you’re the leader, it’s bad in a lot of different ways on a short track because you’re at the mercy of the guy behind you,” Hamlin said.
He explained how it is beating on each other for nearly four hours at a short track like Martinsville.
“We’re 43 cars on a half-mile race track,” Hamlin said. “Then you put the checkered flag right in front of us, with some guys on old tires on top of that, and guys are not going to be able to control their cars as good as what they had all day.
“That was the one thing that I thought was going to be good for us on that last restart. Those guys were on older tires, and their tires take a while to come in. When they go cold, it’s like running on ice out there on the restarts.”
So he said he wasn’t surprised when Kenseth bumped Gordon, and then rode Gordon’s No. 24 Chevrolet up the race track. Nor was he shocked when Gordon darted back to the inside and gave Kenseth a little tap in return, sending Kenseth up the track and out of contention for the race win (although replays showed Kenseth overdrove his No. 17 Ford into the corner and was himself at least partially to blame for his demise).
While all that was going on, Hamlin gave Newman a little tap and got by him, and then drove past the dueling cars of Gordon and Kenseth all the way to Victory Lane.
The race was supposed to have been run on Sunday, but was postponed one day because of a torrential rainstorm. Hamlin, who tore the ACL in his left knee playing pickup basketball in January, had hoped to have surgery Monday morning to begin his recuperation as quickly as possible, with a rare off week looming for the Cup Series.
Now he’ll have to wait until Wednesday for the surgery. But he now has the right to celebrate so hard as Monday turns into Tuesday that he’ll be feeling no pain. Surgery can wait.
“This is definitely a good alternative,” a grinning Hamlin admitted.
Sprint Cup Series Standings Pos.+/-DriverPointsBehind 1.+2Jimmie Johnson898Leader2.+2Greg Biffle884-143.-1Matt Kenseth882-164.-3Kevin Harvick837-615.+2Jeff Burton785-113
