Little did Cook know at the time that he was naming his own fate.

Cook's HT Motorsports Toyota Tundra was among the fastest trucks in practice for Saturday's race at New Hampshire International Speedway, but when rains washed out the morning qualifying session and the field was set on team owner points, Cook was relegated to a 20th starting position.

Deep in the field, the Sylvania, OH driver never recovered from the poor starting position soldiering to an 18th-place finish in the 200-lap event on the one-mile New Hampshire oval.

"To come here and have a very fast truck and not get a chance to qualify really hurt us," said Cook. "Racing at New Hampshire is all about track position. It's very tough to pass here. You have to maintain track position throughout the race to finish well. The faster trucks that start up front are going to have that working for them throughout the entire race. Because qualifying got rained out, we never had a chance to be part of that group. We never got a chance to race our race."

For the second race in a row, Cook's No. 59 Harris Trucking Tundra was the fastest truck on the track posting a lap of 29.592 seconds (128.710 miles per hour) and the number one position in the initial practice Friday. Looking forward to Saturday's qualifying, the 2002 New Hampshire Truck Series race winner saw any hopes of his ninth career Bud Pole go out the window when wet conditions derailed the time trial session.

"HT Motorsports has made a lot of inroads over the past month in terms of improving our performance," said Cook. "We've learned a lot in how to approach the new generation chassis set ups. We've learned a lot in what it takes to make the trucks go faster. We applied that at Gateway a couple weeks ago and had a great run, a possible win and an almost sure Top-5 run slip away from us when we had an engine problem. Here at New Hampshire, we had an extremely fast truck again in practice. Unfortunately, we had qualifying get rained out and that put us behind a lot of traffic in the race that we were never able to break free from."

Clearing skies allowed the 18th of 25 Truck Series races on the 2007 slate to roll off as scheduled Saturday afternoon with Cook outside of row 10. While possessing an extremely fast race truck, Cook was bottled up in the pack while front row starter and eventual winner Ron Hornaday, Jr. - second to Cook in Friday's initial practice session - ran off with the win.

"At times during the race today, we had lap times equal to or better than the leader," said Cook. "We adjusted on our Toyota Tundra throughout the race and fixed some elements, but not all of them. We wound up extremely tight through the center of the corner and that only got worse in traffic. We could run down just about anybody on the racetrack, but when we came within five or six truck lengths of them, we'd get extremely tight. We just couldn't drive through the field like we wanted to. This was only the second time we ran a coil bind set up on a flat track, so there are some things we have to learn yet. We'll keep working on it and I'm sure we'll get better as the season progresses."

Cook's 18th-place effort earned him $10,825 in prize money and 109 championship points. The veteran driver is now 15th in the 2007 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series title chase as the series heads to Las Vegas and the Smith's Las Vegas 350 this Saturday, September 22.

The event, Cook's 259th career start and his 240th in a row - the longest consecutive start streak in NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series history - will take the green flag at 6 p.m. Las Vegas time (9 p.m. Eastern). The race will be televised live on SPEED and broadcast worldwide by Motor Racing Network (MRN) and Sirius Satellite Radio.