Denny Hamlin Unsure How Knee Injury Will Affect His Racing

Denny Hamlin had grand plans to win the 2010 Sprint Cup title and knock off four-time defending champ Jimmie Johnson before suffering a setback by tearing his ACL on Friday.

But how will his knee injury affect him inside the racecar?

“I really don’t know yet,” he said via text on Sunday afternoon. “You're supposed to get this operated on asap but I just can’t.”

Prior to the ACL tear (which he sustained playing basketball), Hamlin was optimistic he could be the one to beat Johnson.

Now, he’s not sure what the consequences of the knee injury and added, “I’m just bummed.”

Before the knee injury, he spoke with reporters on the NASCAR media tour and said he was fired up to take down Johnson.

"I know how much it fuels me up wanting to be the guy who takes him off his chair and [replaces him] on the pedestal," Hamlin said in an interview with reporters last week. "I don’t think anyone else in the garage wants it worse than I do right now."

Hamlin was asked then if he had learned anything about winning championships while watching Johnson. He nodded, and said he had first-hand experience with some lessons.

"He forced me into a wreck at California," Hamlin said of the October race at Auto Club Speedway which took him out of title contention. "Not literally, but just mentally. I knew he had the car to beat and there was no way I was going to beat him unless I outdrove him. And I drove over my head and got in a wreck. So he forced me to make a mistake, and that’s what he’s so good at.

"That’s what champions do – they don’t make mistakes, they make others make mistakes."

But how will Hamlin avoid falling into that trap again?

"Learn from last year," he said. "That’s all you can do. The patience level has just got to go up a little bit more, every single week."

With an expected increase in reliability of his Joe Gibbs Racing cars, Hamlin said he knew “how to win a championship, now it’s just going to be executing it.”

Step No. 1, obviously, involves beating Johnson. That was never going to be easy, but with a bum knee, it’ll be even tougher.