Cook Battles Way To 13th-Place Finish In Milwaukee NCTS Race

Terry Cook battled his way to a 13th-place finish in the Toyota Tundra 200 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at The Milwaukee Mile overcoming a number of problems along the way to keep alive a recent string of solid finishes for his HT Motorsports team.

Cook (left), who came into the Milwaukee event with six-straight Top-10 finishes at the famed one-mile oval, struggled in practice to find the right handling balance for his red and white No. 59 Toyota Tundra. Well down on the final practice speed charts, Cook showed his mettle in qualifying touring the track in an average speed of 120.249 miles per hour (29.938 seconds), good enough for 16th place in the 36-truck starting grid.

“I looked at the Milwaukee chassis set-up with my crew chief, Danny Rollins, prior to the race weekend and we both thought we had picked a pretty darn good, competitive set-up,” said Cook. “For whatever reason, the truck didn’t have the suspension travel we anticipated and we struggled to find out why in practice. Fortunately, we were able to get it better for qualifying and got a decent lap out of it.”

The veteran driver made the best of his starting spot racing his way up to as high as seventh position by the midway point of the 200-mile contest only to have misfortune come his way when he had to pit a second time during a caution period to make additional adjustments to his HT Motorsports mount.

“We worked throughout the early part of the race trying to gain track positions,” said Cook. “Anytime you have to pit twice during a pit sequence, that’s going to hurt you. In this case, we didn’t get enough fuel in the truck and we had to come back in a second time. Our pit stops have been improving quite a bit and the last couple of weeks at Texas and Michigan, they have been really, really good. Our first stop at Milwaukee was one of the best we had all season, but unfortunately we had a miscue on the second one and we had to come back in and top off.”

Now back in the pack, Cook rallied back to finish 13th – his seventh Top-15 finish in the last eight races. The effort also kept the Sylvania, OH native in the battle for a Top-10 position in the season championship chase. Cook is currently 11th in the standings, just 29 points out of 10th and 42 out of seventh.

“The biggest thing that we have done through hard work and determination has been to make this HT Motorsports team a Top-10 program,” said Cook. “We’ve proven weekly that we can finish in the Top-15. Now we just have to push it over the hill to be in the Top-10 every week. I’m pretty confident we can do that starting with the next race at Memphis this week.”

Cook and his HT Motorsports mates will take the green flag in the O’Reilly 200 at Memphis Motorsports Park this Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. The event will be telecast live by The SPEED Channel and broadcast worldwide on MRN and Sirius Satellite Radio.

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