Cook Survives Rain, Crash Filled Mansfield NCTS Event

On a normal day, a 250-lap NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Mansfield Motorsports Park would take about two hours to complete. On Saturday, three rain delays and 13 caution periods turned the Ohio 250 at the half-mile oval into an eight-hour survival of the fittest.

“That was a full day,” said Cook, who steered his No, 59 HT Motorsports Toyota Tundra to a 12th-place finish in the race. “For awhile there with the rain, it looked like it was never end.”

Cook’s weekend was all sunshine and blue skies prior to the drop of the green flag as he practiced in the Top-10 before posting his best qualifying effort of the season touring the Mansfield half-mile oval in 16.598 seconds - good enough for sixth in the 36-truck starting field.

Cook’s Toyota was among the leaders when the first rainstorm hit the Mansfield area shortly after the race got underway Saturday. The first of three red-flag periods for wet weather, one storm cell that hit the track was so intense that the fans were instructed to leave the grandstands while teams were directed from the infield to their race haulers outside the raceway.

Eventually, the event - which had a 1 p.m. Eastern Time start - got down to the real business of the day six hours later with Cook running as high as third before coming to pit road shortly after the 50-lap mark.

“We were willing to roll the dice on our pit strategy and we got on a different pit sequence with a lot of the other leading Toyota teams,” said Cook. shown left with crew chief Danny Rollins. “That may have hurt us a little in the end because pit strategy and tire wear turned out to be everything.”

Now mired back in the pack, Cook began his march back toward the front only to have another pit stop, this one for left-side tires, put him back in the pack a second time.

“With all the rain, the track kept getting cleaned off - we call it a ‘green track,’” said Cook. “It was so abrasive that we were struggling for grip. It was just killing the tires, so we changed left-side tires in the middle of the race, something we hadn’t planned on doing. We went the whole race on our right-side tires, all 250 laps. When the truck was good, we could pass just about anybody we wanted, but by the end of race, we just ran out of tires.”

While Cook was hoping for a better finish, he still was happy with the result and had high praise for his HT Motorsports team, a unit he says is getting better each week.

“You come to the track to sit on the pole and win the race,” said Cook. “If you can’t do that, you try to maximize your day. We did that today. This run was another improvement for our team. We unloaded with a good truck and we ran solid all weekend long. Everyone is working better as a unit. Practice and qualifying were the best we’ve had all year. We overcame some adversity during the race and while we didn’t come out of here with a Top-10 finish, it was a lot better than it looked – especially considering where we were with 100 laps to go. We had a great team effort this weekend.”

Cook and his HT mates will be hoping that same kind of effort will produce a top finish in the next event on the 2007 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series tour - the AAA Insurance 200 at Dover (DE) International Speedway this Friday, June 1.

The SPEED Channel will show the 4:45 p.m. Eastern Time event on a taped-delayed basis Friday at 8 p.m. ET. MRN and Sirius Satellite Radio will broadcast the race live as it happens beginning at 4:30 p.m. ET.

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