Cook Notches Top-10 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Finish At Atlanta

Lining up for the final restart of the day in Saturday’s Easy Care 200 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Terry Cook knew there would be plenty of action to contend with over the few remaining circuits.

“It was a typical NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race,” said Cook. “When you get inside 10 laps to go and you have a restart, you have some people making banzai moves, especially at a track like Atlanta where you have multiple grooves. To get out of here with just a little crinkled fender and a Top-10 finish is not a bad day at all.”

Cook and his HT Motorsports Toyota survived the dash to the checkered flag finishing 10th, but just barely as steered his way out of a major incident with just three laps remaining.

“Todd Bodine came off of Turn 2 underneath me and he tried to carry his momentum up in front of me,” Cook stated. “He must have thought he was clear and he just pinched me up into the wall. I thought we were going to have a big wreck, but he did a really good job of continuing on. We all drove away from it, but we had some front end damage that killed us and we lost a couple of spots because of it in the final laps.”

Cook was ready to roll from the opening practice bell at Atlanta posting the fourth-fastest time during Friday’s two-hour plus session. Cook was one of only four trucks to break the 180 miles an hour mark with an average lap of 180.140.

Track conditions changed Saturday, but Cook was still fast putting the No. 59 Harris Trucking Tundra outside the seventh row in qualifying with a lap of 30.871 seconds (179.586 mph). With a solid truck under him, Cook flirted with the Top-10 throughout the first half of the race avoiding some of the tire issues that were plaguing his fellow competitors.

“We never had any tire issues today,” said Cook. “The set-up we had under our truck didn’t make the total amount of grip that some of the other guys did today and maybe that’s why they had some tire problems and we didn’t. We changed the balance back and forth today a couple of times and we got pretty good by the middle portion of the race.”

On the final pit stop of the day, Cook and crew chief Danny Rollins made a bold move taking only two tires and fuel. The strategy boosted Cook to the sixth position on the track where he held his own until the final restart and the bump up with Bodine.

The 10th-place, lead-lap finish continued Cook’s string of consistent performances at Atlanta as he has now completed 921 of 923 (99.8 percent) of all the laps contested in the seven Truck Series events held at the track.

“Looking back on it now, we should have dropped the track bar a little bit on that last pit stop because we were just way too loose with only two tires,” said Cook. “I always hate to lose spots on the final restart, but there really wasn’t anything we could do about that. I’m just happy that we’re finally starting to get the kind of results we’ve been working toward. The last six to eight races, we’ve been extremely competitive without getting the finishing results we deserve. We were very fast at Martinsville last week, led the most laps, and didn’t get the finish we should have. That could have been a win, or at least a Top-5.

“We came to Atlanta thinking we could run in the Top-5 and got a Top-10 finish out of it. Our program has really come to life, especially on the mile and a half tracks with this finish here and a Top-5 finish at Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. After those two runs, it’s pretty easy to have a smile on my face and say that I’m very excited to be going to one of my favorite tracks - Texas Motor Speedway - next week.”

Cook and his HT Motorsports Toyota Tundra will head to the ultra-fast, 1.5-mile Fort Worth oval this week for practice on Thursday before taking the green flag in the Silverado 350K Friday evening at 9 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.