Hamlin fractured a lumbar vertebra in a final-lap crash with Joey Logano at Fontana, Calif., on March 24 — an injury that required him to miss four full races and exit the Sprint Cup event at Talladega after 23 laps. But the Virginia native had been dealing with back issues well before that incident, as evidenced by a July weekend at Daytona last season where spasms led him to skip two Sprint Cup practices and a scheduled NASCAR Nationwide Series start.

Compounding it all are the results on the race track. After returning from his injury earlier this year, Hamlin was optimistic about keeping alive his streak of qualifying for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup every season in which he was eligible. But after two top-five finishes to begin his comeback, the No. 11 team has dropped off the playoff radar, managing only a single top-10 result in 10 races since. Hamlin came to Michigan a distant 25th in points, without a victory on the season, and all but conceding his playoff hopes were done.

That kind of uncharacteristic performance has led many to connect Hamlin’s results with his back pain, two things the driver contends are unrelated. When Hamlin lists the reasons for the No. 11 team’s struggles, he touches on a number of topics — a change in setup strategy that left the No. 11 team behind others in the garage area, his cars not being exactly where they need to be, Toyota Racing Development tinkering with engine packages to first reduce and then gradually restore horsepower in an effort to improve reliability. He never mentions his back.

“I used to wonder how anyone in the world could run 15th. I never understood how you run 15th. And here lately, we’ve been struggling just to get there. We just have lost ourselves at some point,” Hamlin said. Others in the garage moving toward what he calls “back down” setups forced him to alter his driving style and “threw us for a complete loop,” he added. “It threw all of our setups out of the window.”

Hamlin said he and crew chief Darian Grubb sat down earlier this week to discuss a change of approach for Michigan, where Hamlin finished 30th in June. “Arguably my worst race ever in the Cup Series,” he called it. The goal is to try and build some momentum toward some of Hamlin’s better tracks later in the summer, and perhaps take some steps back toward contention even though a Chase berth is almost certainly out of reach. Qualifying eighth for Sunday’s event at Michigan offered a hopeful start.

“It’s been tough,” said Hamlin, a 22-time race winner on NASCAR’s top series. “We’ve just not run good at all. We’ve been trying to find ourselves, so to say, and struggling to find what it takes to run fast. We’ve had some issues. We’ve had motor things that haven’t been up to par. … And some car stuff, some handling issues that me and Darian have had to sit down in the office and try to figure out over these last few weeks. We think this weekend is going to be a good start for that.”

There’s also another matter that will eventually require attention — Hamlin’s back. The driver said he’ll have something done in the offseason, though right now he’s not sure exactly what. Sometime in early fall, Hamlin said he’ll begin sitting down with doctors and discussing options, one of which is surgery and an ensuing recovery period of six to 12 weeks. Whatever path he chooses, he wants to be ready in time for the 2014 season.

“I’ll do something,” Hamlin said. “I’ve done rehab, and I do rehab all the time, and it just doesn’t get better like it should. I’m going to do whatever it takes. The doctors don’t want to operate, that’s for sure. They are leaning toward not wanting to do it. But if it affects what’s going on and how you feel in the car, we have to do something.”

Meanwhile, he deals with those who believe he should step out of the car now to have something done — a subject that led to a brief war or words with former driver and current television analyst Kyle Petty — or that he’s hurting his race team by staying in the seat. Hamlin is more focused on trying to return his team to contention, and keeping alive his streak of winning at least once in each of his full-time seasons at NASCAR’s top level.

“I’m going to gut it out as long as I can for this race team. As long as they’ll have me, really,” he said. “For a driver to willingly get out of his race-winning team (and) car is crazy by any driver’s standards. I’m just going to do everything I can to be competitive. There’s no reason why I can’t. I want to keep my streak alive of winning every year. There’s things I’ve got to look forward for the rest of this year. There are a lot of positive things that we can do from here on out. We want to spoil the Chase. We want to be the guys who are stealing wins from Chase guys. It’s got to start soon.”

MORE:

Larson’s car control was evident in last month’s Truck Series event on the Eldora Speedway dirt track, and his talent is obvious to anyone who’s ever watched him race. And yet, he hasn’t even completed a full season in the Nationwide ranks, where he stands eighth in driver standings. Is that enough to prepare him for a Sprint Cup Series where even two-time Nationwide champion Ricky Stenhouse Jr. stands 20th in points?

“Is Larson ready for it? You could say he is. You could say he isn’t,” Busch said. “It’s the same as myself. A lot of people said I was. I ran the Nationwide Series in 2004, and change a couple races, the way the outcomes were, and maybe I could have been champion. … Times have changed a little bit. Cars have changed a little bit. Larson, I think, is in a different situation than I was. I’d like to see him more top-fives, more challenging for wins like he was at Bristol earlier this year. In a couple of other places, he’s been real close. You can throw a guy like that in a Cup car and he could be another Jimmie Johnson — doesn’t win very much or if ever in Nationwide, but then goes and wins 60-something Cup races.”

Indeed, in two full seasons on the now-Nationwide circuit, Johnson won just one race — at Chicagoland in the summer of 2001. His most famous moment in that series wasn’t a victory; it was a frightening head-on, high-speed, pre-SAFER barrier crash at Watkins Glen from which he thankfully emerged unscathed. And yet, Johnson moved into the sport’s premier series and everything clicked, to the tune of 64 wins and five championships, and counting.

Does Larson have the capacity to make a similar transition? Perhaps, but Johnson said there are more things to be gained with experience.

“When you look at Kyle’s background, and he’s driving cars with far more power than grip, I think the Cup car will suit his style far better than a Nationwide car,” he said. “But you do need that foundation of knowing these tracks, because when we show up, our fastest lap we run all weekend will probably be our first lap right now. And if Kyle Larson wants to go to Cup next year, that’s tough to do. He’s going to need the whole session to get where he needs to, and then you’re five or six adjustments behind the fast guys. And that’s when the Nationwide Series is so good. You can learn the tracks and understand some things there.”

It’s a debate that Joey Logano, who moved into NASCAR’s top division with Joe Gibbs Racing at age 18, can relate to. Although he was younger then than Larson is now, the experience level is comparable: Logano entered with 19 Nationwide races (and one victory) along with three starts on the Sprint Cup tour and one on the Truck Series. Despite two race wins, he struggled to find consistency, and this past offseason moved to Penske Racing.

“Kyle’s got a ton of talent, and there’s no doubt in my mind he’s going to be in the Sprint Cup Series,” Logano said after winning the pole for Sunday’s race. “It’s a big step. I know it’s a big step. And I think he knows it’s going to be a big step. I think he can handle it, also. He’s a lot older than I was when I first started doing it; he has a lot more racing experience than I did when I first started. I feel like he does have a shot at it. I don’t know what the plan is with that car and what they’re going to do, and I really try to focus on my own stuff. But I think Kyle is an amazing talent that is going to make it someday. But at the same time, I always tell people don’t rush it, because sometimes it’s not quite worth it.”

Johnson said staying in the Nationwide ranks for too long can work against drivers who might develop habits that hinder their ability to handle the more powerful Sprint Cup cars. But in Larson’s case, the questions center on a shortage of Nationwide experience rather than an excess of it, in an age when up-and-coming drivers like Austin Dillon and Stenhouse are staying in the lower series longer to try and be more prepared when they do move up.

Then again, it might not matter.

“Whether you’re ready or not, I don’t think you’re ever really ready to make the jump from Truck or Nationwide to Cup. I think the jump is so large, that you can definitely see it whether you’re involved in it or you’re outside watching it,” Busch said.

“I think sometimes the Cup guys, like myself, make it look that way when we go to Nationwide and show what we can do there and lead all the laps and run up front. But you can only give so much sense to those guys in Nationwide of how strong we are as drivers and teams of what it’s going to be like at the Cup level. Making that jump, it’s challenging because the competition is so stiff, and your car has to be so good, and you’ve got to be able to communicate with your team and everything like that — a lot more in particular than you do, say, in the other series.”

This from a driver who won two races his rookie season at NASCAR’s top level, including one at Phoenix that remains his lone victory in a Chase for the Sprint Cup event. But it was Busch’s earlier victories on the Nationwide tour that gave him confidence he could make it, even during those rough times early on.

“The thing is, when you’re in Truck or Nationwide or wherever you’re coming from, you need to be winning. And if you’re winning, you’re used to that feeling so then when you get to the Cup level and you don’t have the wins coming so often or as readily available because they’re a lot harder to get, you seem to get down on yourself, and it seems to make you wonder sometimes whether you are ready or you aren’t ready. You definitely just need to keep plugging along, keep trying, I guess, and make the most of the opportunity that you have to run well and maybe not necessarily win, but just run well.”

That’s perhaps a reason why Busch would prefer to see Larson in contention for victories more often. But one thing seems certain — whether it’s Larson or any other driver, each successive season needs to build on the last. The fate of Montoya, who stagnated at EGR after making the Chase for a first and only time in 2009, seems proof positive of that.

“I think you have to concentrate on making your sophomore year better than your rookie year and not go into that sophomore slump, so to say,” Busch said. “But then the third year, fourth year in, you’ve got to definitely be in your own.”

MORE: