Cook, HT Motorsports Toyota Finishes 29th In Martinsville NCTS Shoving Match

After leading more than half of the Kroger 200 race at Martinsville Speedway Saturday, Terry Cook was visibly dejected with finishing 29th in the wreck-filled NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race.

“The only guy that leaves Martinsville happy is the winner,” said Cook. “Everyone else leaves here ticked off.”

Cook had right to be upset after a trio of incidents pushed his No. 59 HT Motorsports Toyota Tundra out of the top spot and into the garage area for repairs late in the 200-lap event on the .526-mile Martinsville oval.

“Martinsville has pretty much become a one-groove track since they redid the corners with concrete,” said Cook. “When you go to a track that’s only one groove, the only way to pass is to beat and bang, push somebody out of the way. Until there is a second groove at Martinsville where people can roll up alongside each other and power off the turn, you’re not going to have clean racing.

“Don’t get me wrong – you don’t mind a little beating and banging on a short track like Martinsville, but it’s not any fun to race when you have to move the guy in front of you to get a position,” Cook continued. “When you consistently have to move people to pass them, somebody is going to get wrecked and that’s basically what happened to us.”

Cook’s red and white Toyota was fast from the first lap of practice Friday posting the third-best time in a rain-abbreviated, 80-minute test session. Qualifying was another story, however, as a loose condition on his time trial lap put Cook deep in the field in the 24th position when the race took the green flag Saturday afternoon.

Knowing that track position was key to winning the race, Cook and HT Motorsports crew chief Danny Rollins had already formulated a plan to win the race regardless of where they started the event.

“Danny and I had talked about not stopping for fuel the whole week prior to the race,” said Cook. “It’s a 200-lap race and you can make it on fuel without pitting. To me, that’s not the best type of racing, but if that’s what you have to do to win, then that’s what you have to do. We knew if we conserved fuel from the time we fired the motor, we could make it to the finish without pitting. We just worked track position to our advantage to inherit the lead and then we did our best to hold it. The plan worked out just fine until around Lap 130. Then things started to get a little stupid.”

Cook advanced a couple of positions in the early going until a caution flag on Lap 26 – the first of 13 on the day totaling 70 laps – had everyone heading to the pits. Everyone, that is, except Cook.

“I was pretty surprised when all the trucks in front of me pitted,” said Cook. “The buzz in the garage area was that several teams were going to try it. I had several crew chiefs and drivers tell me they were going to pit. Everybody talked the talk, but we were the only ones to walk the walk. I knew all weekend long that we were going to have enough fuel to make it. I was never worried about making it. Heck, even when we came in for repairs after we got wrecked, we didn’t put fuel in. There was no need to.”

Back under green and now on the point, Cook’s Tundra proved to have plenty of steam leading a host of challengers including fellow Toyota drivers Jack Sprague and Mike Skinner. Over the next 100 laps, Cook would hold off the pair as the race alternated between green and caution flag periods.

“My truck wasn’t as good on long runs as some of the trucks behind us,” said Cook. “It would run about the same speed as the guys behind us lap after lap once they got to us. You might not believe it, but even at a small track like Martinsville, you get aero tight. That means the only way we were going to get past was for the guy behind us to dive bomb us in the corner, hit us, and slide us up the track to make the pass. Unfortunately, that’s basically what happened to us.”

Sprague was the first to put the bumper to Cook’s truck shoving him out of the lead as the pair raced into the first turn on Lap 135. Cook managed to right his truck and maintain the third position before another shoving incident, this one courtesy of Ron Hornaday, Jr., dropped Cook back to eighth in the running order with just over 50 laps remaining.

David Starr then delivered the knockout blow to Cook’s hopes of a Top-10 finish when he blasted Cook from behind forcing Cook’s Toyota and the Chevy of Kyle Busch into the Turn 1 wall. Battered and in need of repairs from the trifecta of incidents, Cook wheeled his way onto pit road where he lost several laps as the field went back to green flag racing.

“In the last third of the race, we had people driving all over us and moving us out of the way,” said Cook. “You wind up showing your displeasure with your fellow competitors, but really, that’s the type of racing that Martinsville Speedway provides. There’s not much you can do about it. That’s just the way it is there.”

Cook eventually returned to the track and limped around to a 29th-place finish - hardly a reward for leading 107 of the 200 laps in the race. Still 14th in the NCTS season championship standings, the veteran driver is only focused on winning as the division heads to Atlanta for the fourth to last event of the 2007 campaign.

“I stopped looking at the points a long time ago,” said Cook. “We’ve been all about winning races for the last month or so and we’ve put ourselves in a position to do that several times. We’ve had a great truck, fast at every race for the last five or six races, and I am really looking to racing at Atlanta next week. It’s the complete opposite of Martinsville. You can race everywhere from the bottom of the apron to the top of the wall. I’m looking forward to racing where you don’t have to run over somebody to pass them.”

Cook and his HT Motorsports Toyota Tundra will take to the green flag in the Easy Care Vehicle Service Contract 200 at Atlanta Motor Speedway Saturday, October 27 at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. The event will be telecast live on SPEED and broadcast worldwide on the Motor Racing Network (MRN) and Sirius Satellite Radio.

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