Terry Cook No. 60 Wyler.com Toyota Tundra Preview
Round 8 of 25 - AAA Insurance 200: Dover International Speedway

Terry Cook heads into the race at Dover fresh off his second top-five finish of the year, a solid fourth-place run in his home state in the Ohio 250 at Mansfield Motorsports Park . Cook has raced in all eight previous Dover NCTS races, and finished eighth in this race last year.

Dover is known as the Monster Mile. Do you think that is a fitting name? "There’s no better way to describe it. It is extremely fast, and even though it widens out in the race the groove can be extremely narrow - especially when you are going into or coming off the corners. It’s a tough place and it’s even tougher for us because we are the first vehicles out on the track for the weekend. When we start our practice there is no rubber at all on the track and it takes more and more rubber with each lap on the track. Not only from us, but the Nationwide cars and the Cup cars. So we have a much different track from the time we start our practice runs until the time we see the checkered flag in the race.”

The backstretch at Dover seems to be very claustrophobic with the infield horse track and all of the buildings back there. Do you feel it’s a little tight back there? “That’s a great way to describe it, claustrophobic. The horse track is there and it’s raised up so you have no sight lines at all. The buildings on the outside of the track make it feel like you are almost enclosed inside a box. You really rely on your spotter to tell you what’s going on when you’re going through one and two because if anything is breaking loose down the backstretch you won’t see it until it’s too late.”

Do you still have a “concrete truck” or a “concrete setup” now that the coil binding setups have been in use? “In that sense, Dover is just another track now that we’ve moved to the coil binding setups. You run the springs so soft it’s like a solid clump of metal instead of a spring. It used to be a driver would ask for a chassis that had a little more flex to it, or even a chassis that was a little more stiff, depending on his own preferences. Coil binding has really changed all that. You see some teams come to Dover without going to a complete coil bound setup. Some will try it just on the left side, some will try just on the right, and then there are the teams that are solid all the way across. You just have to go with whatever works best for you. We are always trying to find something different.”

The Dover concrete was treacherous the first few years it was in place. Has it become a good racing surface now? “I am not usually a fan of racing on concrete, but Dover is the exception. It has really gotten to be a racy place. The one problem is, and this is with concrete in general, is that it takes so much time to get rubber down. Asphalt takes rubber a lot easier and the groove widens out a lot quicker. And at Dover if it rains at all you have to start all over. That’s not as much of a problem on an asphalt track. And with the concrete you have seams at the expansion joints. All of those seams start to take rubber from the moment you start practice. Eventually it builds up so much you feel a real harmonic vibration all through the truck. There's been a few times when I thought I might have a tire going down or equalizing and it's just the rubber building up in the seams.”

Terry Cook’s Dover Stats:

Terry Cook has eight previous Dover starts, with one top-five (third in 2005) and three top-ten finishes (tenth in 2002, third in 2005, eighth in 2007). He has completed 1,550 of 1,603 possible competition laps (96.7%) and has led 13 laps (all in 2005). His average Dover start is 9.9 and his average finish is 12.8.