Cook Not Happy with 17th at Memphis

Terry Cook thought he had a chance to continue his streak of top ten finishes but a scrape with the infield wall left the Sylvania , Ohio native with a dissatisfying 17th-place finish in Saturday’s O’Reilly 200 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Memphis Motorsports Park . Cook started the No. 60 Wyler.com Toyota in 28th and started to make some progress in the early going but a scrape with another competitor trying to avoid a crash in front of him just prior to halfway left the truck with enough damage to slow his progress.

“We weren’t very good when we unloaded and we really struggled in qualifying,” Cook said. “We made some adjustments and the truck started to respond and we were actually on the verge of being pretty good. Just as I started to think we would be able to salvage a pretty decent finish they started wrecking in front of me through turns three and four. It’s very narrow through there and Michael Annett came down trying to avoid someone spinning in front of him and got into me. That pushed me down into the inside wall coming off turn four and bent in the left front pretty significantly. Once that happened we were effectively done being competitive for the night.”

There is a high point for Cook and the Wyler Racing Team throughout what was otherwise a frustrating weekend.

“The best part of the weekend is that we are still up in the top ten in the points,” Cook said. “Some of the guys in front of us in the points had some problems and even with the day we had we were able to make some gains on them. We lost some points to some of the other guys but we’re still hanging in there. We’re really working hard to figure out what’s going on and why we’re having a hard time the past few weeks. Once we get it figured out, and I know we will, this team will start to get the finishes it deserves. That’s really what frustrates me the most about the weekend here is that we shouldn’t have been running around in that pack to get crashed to begin with; we should have been running up at the front instead.”

Cook sits ninth in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series standings after 12 races, 189 points behind leader Ron Hornaday. Cook is 25 points behind eighth-place Jack Sprague and is just 105 points behind fifth-place Rick Crawford.

Next up for Cook and the No. 60 Wyler.com Toyota is the Built Ford Tough 225 at the 1.5-mile Kentucky Speedway. The 150-lap race is scheduled for a green flag shortly after 7 P.M. Eastern on Saturday July 19. SPEED will broadcast the race live, and MRN Radio will have the live radio call on select affiliates nationwide and on Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 128.