Team Determination Wills Cook,
HT Motorsports Toyota To Solid Atlanta Finish

Martinsville, VA (March 17, 2007) – After contact with the wall left his HT Motorsports Toyota Tundra with significant front-end damage, Terry Cook thought his chances of a good finish in Friday’s American Commercial Lines 200 could end up on the trailer in the Atlanta Motor Speedway garage area.

“Half of the nose of our truck was gone, the upper and lower control arms, the tie rods and the front clip were bent,” said Cook. “The guys on this team not only fixed the truck and kept us in the race, but they actually got it driving pretty good. It was a great performance by them. A lot of other teams would have just taken the hard left into the garage and called it a night, but my guys stuck with it and got us out of here with a solid finish.”

Cook eventually finished 17th in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event at the 1.5-mile Atlanta oval bringing an end to a challenging day that started with traffic accident on the way to the racetrack

“One of the team vehicles got rear ended in a minor traffic accident on the way to the track this morning,” said Cook. “Fortunately, it was just a bump-up in the rain and no one got hurt, but that’s the way our day started.”

The early wet weather continued throughout the morning cutting practice for the event to just under an hour. Despite sunny conditions during qualifying, the gray clouds didn’t seem to lift from the HT Motorsports effort as a rare part failure negated a possible top run during time trials later in the day.

“We thought we’d have a solid qualifying run and then the engine cut off switch on the steering wheel broke shutting down the engine on our qualifying lap,” said Cook. “I’ve never had that happen in all the years I have been racing. It was a real fluke deal.”

The unlucky electrical problem short-circuited Cook’s qualifying run putting him at the back of the 35-truck field when the green flag flew Friday evening.

“Our truck wasn’t bad at the start of the race,” said Cook. “We raced up to about 20th place and then I got into the wall – just a love tap – coming off of Turn 4. I think it pushed the fender down on top of the right front tire. It didn’t take but a couple of laps for it to cut down the tire and stick us in the fence.”

Cook pitted more than a half dozen times during the ensuing caution period as his team repaired his truck. The Sylvania, OH driver restarted the race at the tail end of the field on Lap 65 and over the final half of the 130-circuit contest, manhandled his Harris Trucking Toyota Tundra back on to the lead lap coming home 17th behind race winner Mike Skinner.

“Normally, a 17th-place finish wouldn’t bring a smile to your face, but everyone around here is smiling,” said Cook. “While it wasn’t what we had in mind at the start of the day, knowing how badly damaged the truck was and how the chips were down for us, to come out of here with a Top-20 finish makes it a pretty big day.”

The finish also helped Cook (267 points) jump to 25th in the Truck Series championship chase – just 91 markers out of 10th position in the standings after three of 25 events this season.

“Maybe this was our lucky day,” said Cook. “This could be the night our race team came together as a group. When you are a new team like we are, you look for things to build on. To have the kind of effort and result we had tonight after the kind of day we had today might be that spark. We have a lot of new people learning to work together. It was the kind of performance everyone could feel good about and one that we might look back in November at the end of the season and say that was the moment that helped us turn the corner on our year.”

Cook and the HT Motorsports team will now have a week off before taking the green flag in the Kroger 250 at Martinsville (VA) Speedway on Saturday, March 31. The event – a ‘home track race’ for the Martinsville-based HT organization – will be telecast live on FOX beginning at 3 p.m. Eastern Time.

The event will also be broadcast live on the Motor Racing Network (MRN) and Sirius Satellite Radio.

For more information about HT Motorsports and driver Terry Cook, please log on www.htmotorsports.com.

Team and driver interview or information requests should be directed to John Close at closefinishes@aol.com or by calling 704-236-9986.