By David Morgan, Associate Editor
After missing the past six weeks following a leg injury, Chase Elliott will make his return to the cockpit starting with Sunday’s NOCO 400 at Martinsville.
The 2020 NASCAR Cup Series champion was snowboarding in Colorado during the week prior to the March 5 race at Las Vegas when he suffered an injury to his left leg in which he broke his tibia and forced him to the sidelines.
Elliott explained that he “didn’t have a cool story” to go with the incident that caused his injury, noting that it was “just a perfect storm. My knee decided it was ballgame that day and I was down for the count.”
“I have a few screws in the top of my tibia there. It’s really more I guess knee-located than it is lower leg…Rehab has been I guess pretty standard for that type of injury. It’s not an uncommon injury by any means. It certainly could have been a lot worse. Fortunately, there wasn’t an ACL tear, meniscus or any of that, so that was all very positive and like I said, could have been a lot worse. Unless I injury it or hurt it again, no there shouldn’t be any lingering surgeries to have to remove any of that stuff or any of that.”
He added that as soon as the injury occurred, he reached out to team owner Rick Hendrick and crew chief Alan Gustafson from the emergency room to keep them apprised of what was going on and so they would have time to make plans for his absence.
“I certainly knew it wasn’t right and it was probably going to take a surgery,” Elliott said. “And to what extent it was, obviously I didn’t know at that point in time and was just hoping for the best. Whatever it was going to be, it was going to be. It was done at that point, right? I was more just thinking about tackling what it was and doing what the doctors told me to do to get back to 100% as soon as I could.”
After so many weeks away not being behind the wheel, Elliott noted that coming back at a physically demanding track like Martinsville would not have been his first choice, but the with the progress he has recently seen in his rehab, he feels up to the task on the half-mile track.
“It’s going to be tough. I was non-weight bearing for a number of weeks. When you’re not using a muscle on your body, you lose a large percentage of your muscle mass in just the first couple of weeks, so all of those things are very normal. So yeah, it’s going to be tough, for sure. But I feel like I’m to a point…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at NASCAR – Motorsports Tribune…