MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- When he first suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament to his left knee while playing pickup basketball on Jan. 22, Denny Hamlin tried to downplay its significance.

He insisted -- again and again -- that he could make it through the 2010 Sprint Cup season as driver of the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing without missing a beat. Surgery could wait until after the season, he repeatedly said.

Well, Hamlin changed his tune this weekend at Martinsville Speedway, where it was announced that he will race in this Sunday's Goody's Fast Pain Relief 500 and then undergo surgery to repair the torn ACL "as soon as I can early Monday morning." If Sunday's race gets rained out -- a distinct possibility since local forecasts are calling for an 80 percent chance of rain most of the day -- Hamlin said he still will participate in the race and move the surgery to Tuesday.

"We were going to wait until the end of the season, but just decided that it wasn't a good idea," said Hamlin, a preseason favorite to challenge for the championship who is off to a slow start and sits 19th in points. "We were doing some further damage to the knee and to me it's not something that's worth suffering forever or having a permanent limp or anything like that. It just didn't make much sense."

The surgery will be performed by Dr. Patrick Connor with OrthoCarolina in Charlotte, N.C. Hamlin said that he hopes to be back in the car for the very next Sprint Cup race on April 10 in Phoenix, but Hamlin said that team officials have arranged to have Casey Mears standing by as an emergency fill-in -- either for the entire weekend, or if Hamlin starts the race but needs to climb out of the car at any point.

Mears, who finished 21st in points in 2009 while driving for Richard Childress Racing, has been attempting to run Cup races in the No. 90 Chevrolet fielded by Keyed-Up Motorsports. The car failed to qualify for four of the first five races, with Mears finishing 30th in his 2010 debut last Sunday at Bristol.

"We're going to have Casey Mears standing by for a few weeks just to see how things go," Hamlin said. "Obviously, they've been trying to get that program together and we felt like he was our best option as far as being able to use someone to get a good finish." (Continued)