Terry Cook No. 60 Wyler.com Toyota Tundra Preview
Round 10 of 25
Cool City Customs 200: Michigan International Speedway

Terry Cook enters the Cool Town Classics 200 excited to race at his “true” home track, Michigan International Speedway. Located just 45 minutes from his native Sylvania , Ohio , Cook watched the likes of Bobby Allison, Richard Petty, David Pearson, and Cale Yarborough race at the 2-mile Irish Hills oval

Are you excited to come to MIS and have a shot not only to run in the top ten but to win? “I really am. We’ve been here eight years and we’ve had good top ten trucks, but it’s exciting to come back and have a chance to win. This is a very good top-five caliber team. We haven’t showed it here lately, but I know we will come to Michigan and not only run up front but have a chance to win.”

How important is this race for you? “It’s very important for me personally. There are a few other tracks we might consider “home” tracks but this really is home for me. Geographically this is the closest track to where I grew up – 45 minutes away in Sylvania , Ohio . I can remember a lot of weekends we would race on Saturday night at Flat Rock Speedway (in suburban Detroit ) and then Toledo Speedway wouldn’t run on the Sunday night of the Cup weekends at MIS because everyone wanted to be up here. We’d come up and tailgate in the infield. Even once I started my racing career, I never even dreamed of racing at Michigan . I can remember coming here for the first time in 1999 thinking how cool it was to finally be able to race at MIS.”

The race is one of the shortest of the year – just 100 laps – do you look at it any differently than the other races on the schedule? “It really isn’t any different than the other races because we don’t really have any races that are extremely long. At Daytona and Talladega you can sit back and wait for the final 20 laps or so. At Michigan you don’t want to hold back and be running tenth with 20 laps to go because it’s so hard to make up positions. With the short race at Michigan you really want to be up on the wheel.”

Do you have fun racing at MIS? “It’s probably one of the most fun racetracks we go to all year long. It is overwhelmingly fun. There are so many grooves and it’s nice that you can move around and search for the line that works best with your truck. If your truck isn’t quite perfect on the bottom you can move up top and see if you’re any better up there. At a lot of the tracks there’s just one groove and they are very hard to pass. At Michigan it is so wide it has what I like to call a lot of recovery room. You can make a mistake and you have a lot of room to save the truck. At a lot of other tracks you make a similar mistake and you’re putting a truck out to pasture.

This is one of the few tracks we run on that tend to produce green flag pit stops – does that affect your race strategy at all? “We have our competition meeting on Mondays and we will talk about that. You do see a lot of long green flag runs at Michigan so there is a high likelihood we’ll see a green flag stop. But we usually wait until we get finished up with practice and see how tire wear is and what fuel mileage is like before we really start to set our strategy.”

This week’s truck: Terry is racing chassis No. 82 this weekend at Michigan . No. 82 has been Wyler Racing’s dedicated backup truck at most superspeedway races in 2008. No. 82 was drafted into service for the first time this season when the team’s primary truck was damaged in practice at Charlotte , where Cook led two laps and finished sixth.

Terry Cook’s Michigan International Speedway stats: Terry Cook has started all eight previous NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races at Michigan International Speedway. His has five top-ten finishes with a best finish of sixth in 2002. His worst finish at MIS is 13th. He has completed all 802 possible competition laps at MIS. His average start is 13.2 and his average finish is 9.6.