Cook, HT Motorsports Toyota Tundra To Battle Mansfield "Taj Mahal"

According to Terry Cook, fans attending this Saturday’s Ohio 250 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Mansfield Motorsports Park will see a race facility that is a far cry from the one that greeted him the first time he saw the track.

“I first went to Mansfield as a crew member on Billy Joe Paxson’s dirt late model car in 1986,” said Cook, who will wheel the No. 59 HT Motorsports Toyota Tundra in Saturday’s NCTS race. “That was before my driving career even started and it was my first exposure ever to dirt late model racing. I was just a mechanic helping out a friend that day. I remember that Mansfield was a pretty rickety old place and that there was basically a mountain on the back straight that served as the backstretch wall. It was nothing back then compared to now. Mansfield was nothing like the short track Taj Mahal it is today.”

Saturday’s 250-lap event will mark the fourth time the Truck Series has visited the Mansfield half-mile oval. Cook (left) has one Top-5 finish in those three races – a third in the inaugural 2004 event. A wreck relegated the veteran driver to a 31st-place finish in the 2005 Mansfield Truck Series race and last year, Cook struggled with handling issues starting fifth and finished a disappointing 22nd.

“We just weren’t competitive at Mansfield in ’06,” said Cook. “We never found the handle entire weekend. We even had an optional test day, but we just fought the truck the entire time we were there. We had a good starting spot because qualifying got rained out, but just really struggled and pretty much we backwards all day.”

In a new situation for 2007, Cook is hopeful of a different result this time around when Saturday’s race takes the green flag at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

“We’ve got a new team, a new manufacturer, a new combination of experienced, winning people, and we’ve just come off a very, very productive short track test,” said Cook, noting his HT Motorsports crew chief – Danny Rollins – captained Bobby Hamilton’s winning effort at Mansfield in 2005. “We’re all pretty excited to get to Mansfield after how good we tested.”

Whatever the result, look for Cook’s No. 59 Tundra to get plenty of attention from the many Ohio fans in attendance.

“I resided in Sandusky, OH for about five years and that’s about an hour from Mansfield,” said Cook. “It’s kind of funny that I raced around the region for a lot of years, but never at Mansfield until the Trucks went there in 2004. So Mansfield isn’t exactly a ‘home track’ for me per se, but there’s a lot of fans that supported me back in my late model days in the 1980s and 1990s that are still around. It’s always great going back there knowing that they will be there, still cheering for me and my team. That’s pretty cool.”

Tickets are still available for Saturday’s Ohio 250 Mansfield Motorsports Park. The event will also be telecast live on network television by FOX and will be broadcast by Motor Racing Network and Sirius Satellite Radio.

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