Late-Race Texas NCTS Crashathon Leaves Cook With 12th-Place Finish

Terry Cook’s 20th career NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start at Texas Motor Speedway proved to be a memorable one as the driver of the No. 59 HT Motorsports Toyota rolled home 12th in the Silverado 350K.

“When the race was over, I walked around the garage and it seemed like every truck that I saw had quite a bit of damage,” said Cook. “Fortunately, nobody was hurt and we’ll all go on to race another day.”

Cook appeared to be in line for his seventh Top-10 Texas NCTS finish before a couple of late wild crashes left his Toyota bruised and battered beyond recognition.

After qualifying 17th in the 36-truck field with a lap of 29.637 seconds (182.205 miles per hour average), Cook set sail for the front of the field at the drop of the green flag.

Working the high side of the race track, Cook roared up to the ninth position by Lap 10 and hovered just inside and out of the Top-10 for the first 100 circuits.

“Our truck was pretty good at the start of the race,” said Cook. “Unfortunately, it really dragged the front suspension components when we went over the bumps on the track. We fought that the entire weekend. We were still fast, but that definitely slowed us, especially late in the race when it actually wore a hole in the sway bar tube. That unloaded the bar and we were very tight at the end of the race. At times, it didn’t even feel like the front tires were on the ground in the turns. That can be pretty hairy at a place as fast as Texas.”

Despite the handling problems, a long, green-flag period allowed Cook and his red and white Toyota to race their way up to the fifth position before having to pit late in the race. Now back just outside the Top-10, Cook managed to drive through the middle of a Turn 3 wreck between leaders Ron Hornaday, Jr. and Mike Skinner with just four laps remaining.

“In the first wreck in Turn 3, we were able to check up, hit the apron and squirt our way through the middle of it,” said Cook. “There were trucks, carnage and debris everywhere, but we somehow survived that one.”

Now in the Top-10 on the restart after a red-flag period to clean up the debris from the accident, the Sylvania, OH driver roared past the flag stand for a green-, white-, checkered-flag finish. Up front, contact between the now leading pair of Chad McCumbee and Jack Sprague set off another major crash as the field rumbled into Turn 1. Cook again raced through the wreck only to have contact from behind once he was past the melee send his No. 59 Toyota head on into the outside retaining wall.

Cook was able to right his truck and steam the wounded racer around the track to the yellow flag finish, but the incident robbed the driver of a Top-10 finish sending him home with a wrecked race truck.

“You know when you are at the front of the field on a restart and you’re coming up on a crash scene, you have to take evasive action and slow down,” said Cook, who also finished 12th in the Sam’s Town 400 Truck Series event at Texas Motor Speedway earlier this season. “I checked up for the wreck and actually made it through when the truck behind me just ran over the top of us. That turned our truck head on into the wall and then I got T-boned by Jack Sprague. That spun me around again and amazingly, we never stopped. I grabbed another gear and kept going, but we really got killed there.

"We had a Top-10 truck all race long and to not get a Top-10 finish and wind up with a destroyed race truck was pretty disappointing.”

Cook, still 14th in the 2007 Truck Series championship standings, will next compete in the division’s penultimate race – the Casino Arizona 150 – a Phoenix International Raceway this Friday, November 9. The event will be telecast live on SPEED at 8 p.m. Eastern Time and broadcast worldwide on the Motor Racing Network (MRN) and Sirius Satellite Radio.

“We’ll be taking the same truck we raced at Gateway earlier this year,” said Cook. “I know it’s an extremely fast truck because we were running second and running down the leader when the engine expired. We’ll also have sponsorship from Vanguard National Trailer Corporation (above), so I’m looking for big things at Phoenix.”

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