Cook Fights to 13th in Dover

Terry Cook drove the No. 60 Wyler.com Toyota to a 13th-place finish in the AAA Insurance 200 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Dover International Speedway on Friday. Cook started 23rd and the Wyler Racing team fought hard to gain track position throughout the day but a difficult handling truck never allowed him to fight for a top-five position.
 
“It was bad when we unloaded, it was bad in qualifying, and it was bad in the race,” Cook said. “The truck hit the concrete doing into turn one and turn three every lap. Every time it hit it would lock the steering for a split second and just about take the wheel out of your hands. When you’re talking about a 200 lap race and the speeds we run at Dover, that’s not a lot of fun. I don’t know what was causing it. The guys worked their tails off to fix it but we never were able to solve it. It certainly wasn’t due to a lack of effort because they worked hard to get the truck to where it would run in the top ten but we just never were able to get it there.”
 
Cook was still able to find some positives about an otherwise frustrating weekend.
 
“It is very frustrating because this team is capable of much better,” Cook said. “When you’re running for all you have and it’s for 12th instead of first, you get disheartened. But I need to give everyone on this team credit. They never once settled. They fought hard to maximize our day. You always want to get the best possible finish you can, and this crew did everything possible to get us the best finish we could. John Quinn made the best calls he could to get us close to the front and the guys gave some of the best pit stops we’ve had all season long. We might not have run the way we wanted but we do see the silver lining on a day like today.”
 
While the handling issues didn’t allow Cook to run for his second-consecutive top-five finish, the Wyler Racing team continued to make adjustments on the truck and make strategy calls to get him to the front.
 
“Another positive is that although it wasn’t exactly how we wanted it, we ran as good at the end of the race as we ever did all weekend,” Cook said. “John is as puzzled about it as I am. We tried to coil bind the right front – and there were some guys doing it and they were very fast – but for whatever reason it didn’t work for us. And with this setup either you are on or you are off; there is no off by a little. But we did get up and lead some laps under caution by design so we picked up an extra five points. It wasn’t as bad of a points day as we might have expected.”
 
Cook unofficially sits ninth in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship standings, 82 points behind leader Rick Crawford and 14 points behind David Starr for eighth. Through eight races, Cook has accumulated two top-five and four top-ten finishes.
 
Next up for Cook and the No. 60 Wyler.com Toyota is the Sam’s Town 400 at Texas Motor Speedway on Friday June 6. The race is scheduled for a 9 P.M. Eastern start and will be televised live on SPEED. MRN Radio will also have the live radio broadcast on selected affiliates nationwide.