Denny Hamlin opens up about recent shoulder surgery that could affect the Busch Light Clash11/30/2023
Denny Hamlin attends award ceremony in Nashville wearing a brace on his right arm to immobilize his shoulder after surgery a week ago to repair a longtime rotator cuff injury — aggravated by pulled tendons he suffered “playing sports” just before the Oct. 15 playoff race in Las Vegas.
Hamlin didn’t disclose the injury publicly during the season, saying he didn’t want anyone to think it served as an “excuse” during his playoff performance. But he conceded Thursday that the post-surgery situation has turned out to be more painful and involved than he anticipated. Surgeons have recommended three months of rest and rehabilitation so Hamlin is not certain where he will be in the recovery process come the first race of 2024, Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum. He was hesitant to say for sure yet whether he would be in the field for that exhibition event or not. “What I’m optimistic of is that I’ve got a great team that’s going to work on me to get this better and certainly, I find it hard to believe that I’ll have more pain in late-January than what I did in the end of October and November,” Hamlin said. “Getting through those last five races was really, really hard so I think if I can get through that, then certainly I’ll be able to challenge myself enough to get back in a car sooner than what they’d want me to.” “It was painful, there were many times when they asked me to turn on a switch and I couldn’t reach it, I couldn’t touch it,” Hamlin said. “We were certainly up against the odds, but one thing is I didn’t want to use it as any kind of excuse for not making the final four. “I think really our performance was as good as it possibly could be on track. I did everything I could to succeed, we just didn’t get it done for whatever reason. Certainly, I didn’t want that to be any excuse of why we didn’t perform well. … It’s just one of those things, I grew up being a right-arm driver and during the playoffs had to switch to holding the wheel with the left hand, so it was certainly different.” -Information and quotes from Denny Hamlin’s Media Availability in Nashville, Tennessee at the 2023 Awards Ceremony Comments are closed.
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