Denny Hamlin not slowed by knee injury, finishes 6th at Richmond

Racing four days after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, Denny Hamlin finished sixth Saturday night at Richmond International Raceway.

Hamlin said the injury, which he suffered playing basketball Tuesday, had no impact on his performance -- the only reason he didn’t finish better was because of a lack of speed and not anything related to his health. Joe Gibbs Racing made some minor adjustments within the cockpit of the No. 11 car to accommodate its driver including moving the accelerator closer to Hamlin’s seat.

“I wasn’t limited in the car at all,” Hamlin said. “Just you really don’t notice anything until you stop and that’s the biggest thing is as soon as I stopped it’s just feeling the throbbing. Feeling your heart beating in your knee. Just tightened up there towards the end, but we just didn’t have a fast enough car to win.”

Following the race Hamlin, who will undergo reconstructive surgery when the season concludes, sat gingerly on the pit road wall with an ice pack wrapped around his knee. With additional time to recuperate, he anticipates being healthier for next week’s event at Chicagoland Speedway, the Chase for the Sprint Cup playoff opener, which Hamlin earned the No. 11 seed.

Hamlin has familiarity with the injury, having suffered a torn ACL in his left knee prior to the start of the 2010 season. That year he initially pushed off surgery before deciding in March to undergo the operation, winning the race before the surgery and three weeks afterward. He competed in all 36 races, not missing any track-time.

“I think it’ll be a lot better next week,” he said. “Just four nights out from when it happened, and anybody that’s had it happen before knows that the first week is pretty tough. I think I’ll start to rehab and everything this week and try to get it stronger and make sure we’re ready to make a Chase run.”

Fellow JGR driver Matt Kenseth won the regular-season finale, giving the organization eight wins in the last 11 weeks and 11 overall in 26 races. Kenseth, Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards account for all eight of JGR’s recent victories with each owning multiple wins on the season.

While Hamlin has been consistently in contention, his last victory came in March at Martinsville Speedway.

“We’re always in the mix with those Gibbs cars,” Hamlin said. “We’re always running as good as the second-place guy. Our consistency has been really good these last few months and that’s something you’ve got to have in the Chase. We definitely would like to win races and we’re going to hopefully get that done next week. I’m proud of this team. We’ve really stepped up these last couple months with our consistency.”