Giving up car can be most painful part of getting hurt

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- Jeff Burton doesn't remember the race, he doesn't remember the year. All he remembers is that he had to get out of the car.

"I just couldn't do it," the Cup Series driver said Friday at Phoenix International Raceway. "I had severe vertigo, and I just couldn't drive. I could do it for a little while, but over a period of time, it just got worse and worse and worse. I finally just had to get out."

Up in the air

Denny Hamlin paced the first practice at Phoenix but the pain was evident and the driver is still unsure if he will race the entire race Saturday night.

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For a competitor on NASCAR's premier series, there are few decisions more difficult. Over the course of the sport's history, drivers have raced in tremendous discomfort, and gone to sometimes ridiculous extremes to do so -- most famously Ricky Rudd, who duct-taped his swollen eyes open at Daytona in 1984 after a rolling crash in a preliminary event left him with facial injuries and a concussion. The ability to play with pain is a prerequisite of the profession, especially under a points system that demands title contenders start every race, and in a garage area where machismo is as omnipresent as the smell of tire rubber.

There's Mark Martin, having to be lifted into his car and competing with a broken wrist, broken kneecap and a broken rib after a 1999 crash at Daytona. There's David Reutimann, sick with the flu, vomiting into plastic bags last year at Charlotte. There's Carl Edwards, breaking his foot while chasing a Frisbee last season and competing days later at Atlanta with orthotics in his shoe. There's Richard Petty, who broke his neck in a crash at Pocono in 1980, kept it to himself, and kept on racing.

And now there's Denny Hamlin, back at the race track just more than a week removed from having the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee surgically repaired. In January, he tore it playing basketball. The plan was to compete all season on the loose hinge and have it fixed in the winter. Then he tore his meniscus, a piece of cartilage that provides support to the knee. The plan was revised, and Hamlin went under the knife March 31. So there he was Friday at Phoenix, limping and refusing to use crutches, gritting his teeth through obvious pain, twisting himself into his race car as if his left leg were made of unbendable steel. He made about 70 laps in practice, and will start Saturday's race. (Continued)