Rudd feels well, remains cautious
By Tim Packman, Turner Sports Interactive
January 16, 2002
3:10 PM EST (2010 GMT)
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Ricky Rudd is well on his way to getting back on track.
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Ricky Rudd
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Rudd is recuperating from a back surgery he had in December, and is thus unable to test his No. 28 Fords at Daytona International Speedway this week. In his place, Andy Hillenburg is taking the wheel.
Rudd did make the trip to Daytona, however, to see how things went with the Robert Yates Racing team. He says that he is feeling much better than he did before the surgery.
"I feel 100 percent, but I'm kind of following doctor's orders," Rudd said on Tuesday. "He wanted me to stay off the race track as much as I could before the season gets cranked up and, hopefully, I won't ever have a recurrence of that injury. I'm just giving myself some time so I can be back in the car at Daytona.
"There's a 10-mile long medical definition of what type of surgery it is, but basically, it's a small incision in your back, and then they go in with a fiber-optic microscope. In the old days, if you had this operation you'd probably have a six-inch slit in your back, but all I've got is about a half-inch scar.
"They still use hand tools, but it's all done by micro-surgery. The thing that sold me on this surgery was that, when I walked in I was hurting, but four hours later I walked out and wasn't hurting. I had a little bit of muscle tightness, but I could have gotten in a race car that afternoon if I had to -- it felt that good."
In the meantime, Hillenburg has the task of testing the cars Rudd will be driving during Speedweeks. Hillenburg, the journeyman driver, and Rudd have been in this position before.
"When I had my own car, these tracks weren't particularly kind to me for a long time so I hired Andy Hillenburg to do a lot of test driving," Rudd said. "That's when we started qualifying on the front row and he has good feedback. With that comes some other things like different body work and so on, but I have a tremendous amount of confidence in Andy Hillenburg. If I was concerned, I would be over there watching everything he did, but he's a tremendous test driver and tremendous race car driver. We're lucky we've got him."
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