Terry Cook No. 60 Wyler.com Toyota Tundra Preview
Round 12 of 25 – Memphis Motorsports Park : O’Reilly Auto Parts 200

Terry Cook comes to Memphis fresh off two consecutive top-ten finishes at Michigan and Milwaukee . He also comes in off of a fourth-place finish in the last short track race at Mansfield Motorsports Park in May.

What can you carry over from the last short track race at Mansfield?

“To be honest, not much. Unfortunately the Mansfield race is all about strategy and track position and not really about racing. You still have to pay attention to that at Memphis but if you have a fast truck you can race your way to the front. The track will let you race side by side and a good truck can make some moves, even to the outside.”

How different is Memphis from where we were last week at Milwaukee?

“If you looked at an aerial picture you might think they are somewhat similar. But they really don’t have any similar characteristics. At Milwaukee you arc it in and roll through the corner. At Memphis you really drive it in hard and use the brakes to get it slowed down. Brakes are very important at Memphis because you carry so much speed into the corners and you really have to get on the brakes hard to slow it down. On top of that you are going down into the corners and then uphill when you are coming out. Especially out of turn four, it’s almost like you’re coming out of the sweeping left-hander at Sears Point . There is such an elevation change.”

How hard is it to come up with a good setup for Memphis?

“It can be a real challenge because they have some big bumps there. We all know about the big dip down the backstretch, but they have some pretty significant bumps going into turn one too. That’s not a bad thing at all; it adds some character to the track. But is presents us a pretty big challenge because we want to get the nose of the truck as close to the ground and seal off all the air from going underneath it as we can. When we hit those bumps it tends to upset that. It’s something we all have to deal with.”

You’ve had two hard-fought top-ten finishes the past two weeks; does that give you extra momentum as we head off into the second half of the season?

“I don’t want to say we have struggled, but we’ve been just a little off the past couple weeks. What it does for me as a driver is tell me my team doesn’t ever quit until the checkered flag waves. That gives me a lot of extra momentum for Memphis and the rest of the year. It’s a little disappointing in the sense that we’ve gained some positions in the points but we’ve lost ground to the leader because we’re in this to win that championship. But it’s a tremendous confidence builder to know that even though we’ve been a little off we can fight hard and still come out with a top ten at the end of the day. John Quinn doesn’t give up trying to come up with a strategy that will get us as close to the front as possible until the race is over. The guys on pit road want to gain as many positions as they can to give us that track position. The competition is so close that you can’t be just a little off and hope to contend for a win. We’re all working hard to make sure we’re not only in contention to win, but we get our share of wins this year too.”

This Week’s Truck: Terry will drive Chassis No. 54, the same truck he drove to a 13th-place finish at Martinsville and a fourth-place finish at Mansfield .

Terry Cook’s Memphis Motorsports Park stats:

Cook has competed in all ten previous NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races at Memphis Motorsports Park . He has four top- ten finishes with a best finish of second in 2002. His average start is 13.4 and his average finish is 16.7. He has completed 1,783 out of a possible 2,004 competition laps (89.0%) and has led five laps at Memphis .