NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Denny Hamlin is uncertain if he’ll run the Feb. 4 Busch Light Clash at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum after having right shoulder surgery Nov. 22.
“I’m a long, long way from where I need to be,” Hamlin said Thursday ahead of the NASCAR Awards at the Music City Center.
Hamlin’s right arm is in a sling.
“I thought I was going to have a three-, four-week recovery like I did before,” Hamlin said, referring to 2019 surgery on his left shoulder. “(I) came out knowing I had a ton of damage that needed to be fixed. It will change my offseason a little bit, going from trying to work on some tracks that I have been so-so at in the simulator. That probably is just not going to happen now.
“It just changes some things and certainly, probably, the first laps on track will be whatever we do in February. Do we need to analyze (racing in) the Clash? Maybe when the time comes because from what I’ve heard, they don’t want me loading it for three months. Obviously, that timeline does not line up (with the Clash).”
#NASCAR … Denny Hamlin on his recovery from recent shoulder surgery and how it could impact if he races in the Feb. 4 Clash. pic.twitter.com/KerLoPYFOP
— Dustin Long (@dustinlong) November 30, 2023
With more than two months before that exhibition race, Hamlin and his doctor will have plenty of time to assess his availability for the Clash. After that event, he would next need to be in a car on Feb. 14 for Daytona 500 qualifying.
Hamlin, who finished fifth in the points this past season, said he had a bone spur in the shoulder and had tendon damage that caused grinding on his rotator cuff during the end of the season. He tore two tendons while in Las Vegas during the Formula One weekend and had surgery soon after that.
Hamlin said the shoulder injury made an impact in the car.
“It was painful,” Hamlin said. “There were many times where if you asked me to flip on a switch, I can’t reach it, I can’t touch it. We were certainly up against the odds.
“One thing is, I didn’t want to use this as any kind of excuse for not making the final or anything like that. I think that really our performance was as good as it possibly could have been on track. I did everything I could to succeed. We just didn’t get it done.”
Hamlin said that whenever he had the shoulder numbed before a race, “our performances were really, really good. It’s just one of those things where I’ve always grown up being a right-hand driver, and, really, I had to switch throughout the playoffs to being just a left hand, hold the wheel with the left, driver. It was certainly different.”
