After turning in the third-best practice effort during Friday's test session, Terry Cook and his HT Motorsports team were confident of a solid finish in the Toyota Tundra 200 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Nashville Superspeedway. Unfortunately for the veteran driver, circumstances both on and off the track intervened and the result was an 18th-place finish in Saturday's 150-lap event.

"We were able to look at the truck after the race and determine why it didn't perform the way we had hoped it would," said Cook. "It's a very good truck, a very solid piece. We just have to get it back up to where we had it in practice on Friday. If we can do that the next time we race it, I think we have a chance to win that race."

Cook debuted an all-new Tundra, complete with a flashy new red and black paint scheme Friday and the results were immediate as he timed in seventh in the first one-hour practice session. In the second 60-minute trial, Cook blazed his way to the top of the scoring pylon with a lap of 30.292 seconds before settling for third in the final practice rundown.

Cook went out 15th in Saturday's qualifying session held in near 100 degree heat and turned in a lap of 30.478 seconds, good enough for the 13th starting position in the 36-truck field.

"We made some adjustments to the truck prior to qualifying that didn't perform up to our expectations," said Cook. "The truck got extremely loose when you got back to the throttle and we hadn't had that problem since we unloaded. We thought it would be better for the race when we took the tape off the nose and changed the air pressures around, but it was pretty much the same, if not worse."

Despite the ill-handling racer, Cook was able to maintain a Top-20 position throughout the first 30 circuits. A pit stop for fresh tires and chassis adjustments allowed the Sylvania, OH driver to race back through the field despite finding it difficult to pass thanks to the demanding nature and aerodynamic challenges of the 1.333-mile Nashville concrete oval.

"When you get in traffic here, you have to have to have a real good truck with great mechanical grip to get around people," said Cook. "If you just take a little bit of air off the nose, it just kills you. You can run a guy down but when you get to within about five truck lengths of him, you really struggle to get past if you don't have a perfect handling truck. You're doing everything you can to not lose the nose of the truck, but you just don't have any grip."

Cook's Harris Trucking Tundra hovered just outside the Top-10 running in 11th-place from Lap 80 through Lap 110 and appeared to be poised for a solid finish when he averted disaster with the save of the race just 20 laps from the checkered flag.

Cook's No. 59 Tundra was totally sideways coming off of Turn 4 after contact from behind courtesy of Joey Clanton and the No. 09 entry. Cook somehow managed to steer his way through the slide without spinning out or crashing and keep his racer headed in the right direction.

Unfortunately, the incident allowed a number of trucks to race by dropping Cook back to the 18th spot. With only a handful of laps remaining, Cook and the team had to be satisfied with the fact they took home any kind of finish and not a wrecked race truck.

"We made some changes on our first pit stop and it really woke the truck up, really made it come alive," said Cook. "We drove up to right outside the Top-10, but some additional adjustments on our next pit stop took the truck back to loose in the center of the corner again. Then we got involved with in an altercation with another truck and that sent us to the back of the pack again. After that, there just weren't enough laps left and we weren't handling well enough to get back to the front."

Cook eventually completed all 150 laps and was awarded $9,550 for the 18th-place effort. He is now 13th (1,633 points) in the 2007 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship standings, 118 markers out of place.

Next up for Cook and his HT Motorsports team will be the at Bristol (TN) Motor Speedway, Wednesday, August 22. The event on the newly repaved Bristol concrete .533-mile high banked oval will take the green flag at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. The race will be televised live on The SPEED Channel and will be broadcast by Motor Racing Network (MRN) and Sirius Satellite Radio.

For more information about Terry Cook,  log on to www.terrycook.com.

To access information about HT Motorsports, log on to www.htmotorsports.com.