Cook To Make 20th Career Truck Series Start At Texas

After 19 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races and nearly 4,500 competitive miles at Texas Motor Speedway, you’d have to think Terry Cook is pretty familiar with the 1.5-mile Fort Worth oval.

“I’m very excited to be going to one of my favorite tracks - Texas Motor Speedway,” said Cook after finishing 10th in the most recent NCTS tour event last weekend in Atlanta. “Texas is a really fun track to drive and I have a ton of experience there. We’re taking a truck that we’ve never raced before – it’s not a new truck, but it’s one we’ve never raced before. It tested extremely well at Chicagoland Speedway earlier this year. I’m really pumped to get Texas and find out just how good that truck is.”

Cook has been plenty good over the past two months consistently placing his No. 59 HT Motorsports Toyota in the Top-5 in practice at each event. In addition to his Top-10 finish at Atlanta last weekend, Cook rolled home a season-best fourth at Las Vegas in mid September.

Meanwhile, the Sylvania, OH driver was running fifth when he caught up in the ‘Big One’ at Talladega and second at Gateway International Raceway when he experienced engine failure. At Martinsville Speedway, Cook led more than half the race – 108 laps – before getting crashed out of the event finishing 29th.

“Our program has really come to life recently, especially on the mile and a half and larger tracks,” said Cook. “It’s pretty easy to have a smile on my face and say that. We’ve been very competitive week in and week out. We just haven’t had the results to show for it all the time. That’s why I’m looking forward to racing at Texas. We know we are going to have a good truck. We just need to get a good finish.”

In his 19 previous races at Texas, Cook has six Top-10 finishes with his best result coming in the 1999 O’Reilly 300 where he finished sixth. Earlier this year, Cook started 22nd and finished 12th in the Sam’s Town 400 Truck Series event at Texas Motor Speedway in the No. 59 Tundra.

“We had great pit strategy all night long and the team had the best pit stops we’ve had all season,” said Cook, who averaged an eighth-place running position throughout the early June Texas NCTS race. “Great pit strategy and great racing sense throughout the event had us in position for another Top-10 finish. Unfortunately, we fell just a little short of that getting shuffled around on the final couple of restarts, but it was still great finish for us.”

Cook will make a detour en route to Dallas for Friday's race stopping by the Toyota Tundra assembly plant in San Antonio, TX on Wednesday. Cook will tour the plant as well as speak to about 100 automotive students at a local high school before heading on to Dallas.

"I'm pretty excited to see the new Toyota Tundra plant," said Cook. "I hear it's really state of the art, but that shouldn't surprise anyone. One thing I have found out racing a Tundra this year is anything Toyota does is always first class."

Cook, 14th in the 2007 Truck Series championship standings heading into Friday’s Silverado 350K at Texas, thinks he could win at least one of the final three remaining races left this season.

“We’ve been racing great lately,” said Cook. “Danny Rollins and everyone on this HT Motorsports team have really been putting in a great effort and we’ve been really close to breaking through into the win column. I really love racing at Texas, and Phoenix and Miami are good tracks for us too. There’s no reason why we can’t win a race before the season is over.”

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.