Cook looks to improve on career struggles at Texas

Texas Motor Speedway is a special track for the Craftsman Truck Series. It's one of just three tracks -- along with Martinsville and Atlanta -- the series visits two times during the season. Plus, the 1.5-mile track has hosted the most races in the Truck Series' 13-year existence with Friday's Sam's Town 400 (8:30 p.m. ET, SPEED) marking the 19th race at the speedway.

For Terry Cook, who along with Rick Crawford has started all 18 previous races at Texas, the track is one of the best on the schedule and he credits the ownership with the track's success.

Terry Cook

"I've raced in every one of the 18 Craftsman Truck Series races held at Texas Motor Speedway," Cook said. "It's a great facility and I have to commend track owner Bruton Smith and general manager Eddie Gossage for that. Every time the track has needed something, they have stepped up and fixed it."

The track may be in top condition, but Cook's record at Texas isn't. The Craftsman Truck Series veteran, who will race in his record 230th consecutive NCTS event and 249th out of the 301 overall Truck Series races, has never won in the Lone Star State.

In those 18 races, Cook has only held the lead in four of them; he has five DNFs and only six top-10s with his best finish being a sixth back in 1999. Despite the difficulties, Cook still beams when talking about the track.

"It's a track that's on the cutting edge of technology," Cook said. "It's the only one we race at where they have caution lights built into the racing surface. It's an amazing place."

The 2007 season started off slow for Cook with his only DNF of the season coming in the season opener at Daytona when a fiery crash relegated him to a 27th-place finish. He followed that up with a 30th at California and things weren't looking very good for the No. 59 team in its first year together.

"Fortunately, we don't always measure our results by our finish," Cook said. "We also measure our success by how the whole weekend went and how the team performed. We were fast in practice and fast at times during the race.

"We [were] a pretty new team -- just two races together -- and I [thought] it was just a matter of time before we put a full weekend together and got this Toyota Tundra running up front." (Continued)