Crash Short-Circuits Solid Run For Cook, HT Motorsports At Kentucky

For the third time in four seasons, Kentucky Speedway got the best of Terry Cook sending the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series driver home early with a wrecked race truck.

This time, Cook was a victim of circumstance as contact from behind sent his No. 59 HT Motorsports Toyota Tundra into the Turn 2 wall on Lap 49 of the 150-circuit Truck Series test on the ultra-fast 1.5-mile oval. Fortunately, Cook was uninjured in the hard wreck – which all but totally destroyed his racer – and left him with a 31st-place finish.

“We’ve had fast trucks at Kentucky but not much success to show for it,” said Cook of his recent season results at the Sparta, KY track. “Saturday night was no exception. We were trying a new chassis and spring combination and had the truck working pretty good. We started off great gaining quite a few spots early in the race. Eventually, we leveled off a little and were just anticipating the first pit stops where we could make our truck better with some adjustments. Unfortunately, we never got to that point.”

Cook’s fortunes were on the wrong side of the tracks from the opening bell at Kentucky as he drew the first position for Saturday’s qualifying session. The result on the hot and slippery track was predictable as he turned in a time of 32.111 seconds (168.117 miles per hour) – good enough for the 24th spot in the 35-truck starting field.

“Typically, the track isn’t very good when you go out early,” Cook stated. “It has been baking in the sun all day and while you can push as many jet dryers across it as you want to try to clean it, until a bunch of hot, sticky tires run across it to pull the grains of dirt and sand out of it, it’s going to be pretty slick. In this case we were also dealing with a 100 laps of Hoosier Tire rubber from the ARCA race the night before that’s not compatible with our Goodyear Tires. Going out first is not something that you want to do in a situation like that.”

Cook showed the sub par qualifying effort wasn’t indicative of just how good his Toyota Tundra was picking up 10 spots in the first 12 laps of the event. Eventually, the Sylvania, OH native settled into a Top-20 position and was riding toward the first round of pit stops when disaster struck on Lap 49.

“The lapped trucks just have to give the faster trucks room,” Cook stated. “We came up on a lapped truck entering Turn 1 and we were a lot faster than him. In that situation, he needed to pick a line and hold it. His truck went up the racetrack and I anticipated driving underneath him. Then he started coming down and I had to pinch my truck down and check up to avoid hitting him. When that happened, I got a little loose and got hit from behind. I didn’t have a problem with that, but the truck that hit us just drove right through me and stuffed us in the wall. It wasn’t just a love tap. He never gave me a chance to recover.”

Despite efforts by crew chief Danny Rollins and the entire HT Motorsports team, Cook’s No. 59 Tundra proved to be beyond repair forcing the team to load the truck prior to the finish. It marked just the second time in 13 Truck Series races this year that Cook wasn’t running at the checkered flag, the first coming in the season opening event at Daytona.

Cook’s misfortune netted just 70 points toward the season championship and dropped him one position to 14th in the 2007 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series title chase. Ironically, he still gained on the opportunity of a Top-10 finish in the standings as his 1,439 points are just 48 markers out of the 10th position in the driver’s standings.

“That’s bittersweet, I guess,” said Cook. “The points mean something because you’re trying to do the best you can every week and get to that championship table at the end of the season. Tonight, we missed an opportunity to capitalize on that and gain a whole bunch of points to get us to that podium finish, that Top-10 position in the championship standings at the end of the year. That’s disappointing.”

Cook and his HT Motorsports team will return to action in the Power Stroke Diesel 200 at O’Reilly Raceway Park in Clermont, IN on Friday, July 27. The event is set for 8 p.m. Eastern Time and 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