Cook, HT Motorsports Shooting For Top Finish In Kentucky NCTS Clash

Terry Cook is quick to tell you he thinks Kentucky Speedway is one of the best tracks on the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series tour – even if the 1.5-mile raceway has broken his heart on more than one occasion.

“I have had major highs and lows at Kentucky Speedway – all in the same race,” said Cook (right), who will pilot the No. 59 HT Motorsports Toyota Tundra in Saturday’s 225-mile event at Kentucky. “In 2004, I was running third late in the race when I ran over a piece of debris and cut down a tire and slammed into the wall extremely hard. In 2005, I had the race lead by four to five seconds when I got the five laps to go signal. I thought that the race was in the bag only to blow out a right-front tire and drive the truck right into the wall. That was two years in a row where we had great finishes, and maybe a win, swept out from under us. Talk about having a great high only to have the pendulum swing and make it pretty much the lowest of lows.”

A veteran of 252 career Truck Series starts, Cook has made seven NCTS appearances at Kentucky with a sixth-place effort in the 2002 event his best finish. The Sylvania, OH native struggled in last year’s Kentucky Truck Series classic after having high hopes of another solid finish.

“I really thought we had a great shot at winning last year at Kentucky,” said Cook. “We had just won the week before at Kansas Speedway. Unfortunately, we took a different race truck to the Kentucky race and it didn’t perform very well. We wound up changing engines because we just couldn’t get any speed out of the truck. It was pretty disappointing to win one week and then go to Kentucky the next and not be very competitive.”

Cook has been more than competitive in the Truck Series this season after joining the HT Motorsports ranks at the beginning of the year. Despite a sub-par 29th-place finish in the most recent division event at Memphis Motorsports Park thanks to a broken sway bar late in the race, Cook is still 13th in the series point standings, a scant 62 markers out of the Top-10.

It’s that incentive to crack the elite 10, along with a fondness for the great racing the Kentucky oval produces, that has Cook eager to take the green flag in Saturday’s event.

“I like Kentucky because it has multiple racing grooves,” said Cook. “It’s a track where you can race two- and three-wide. It’s extremely wide, with multiple grooves above those you usually use, so it has good recovery room if you get in trouble. There’s a lot of racetrack to get your truck back under control before you have an issue with that big, white concrete wall.

“Kentucky is a great track and a wonderful facility,” Cook concluded. “It’s a track I really enjoy racing at. It also offers one of the biggest purses we race for all season. Any track you run well at – even if you don’t win or have the result you think you deserve – is one that you want to go back and race at. That’s why I’m looking forward to going back to Kentucky this weekend.”

Saturday’s Built Ford Tough 225 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event is set for 8 p.m. Eastern Time. The race will be telecast live on The SPEED Channel and broadcast worldwide by the Motor Racing Network (MRN) and Sirius Satellite Radio.

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