In short track racing, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. Just when Terry Cook and the Wyler Racing team had made the adjustments to boost the No. 60 Wyler.com Toyota into contention for a possible top-five finish in Wednesday's O'Reilly 200 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway their luck ran out and Cook was swept into an accident not of his doing. After spending a handful of laps behind the wall for quick repairs Cook was relegated to 23rd at the finish.
"We fought a tight condition all day long and finally made the adjustments to get the truck loosened up," Cook said. "We were back in the pack and we were starting to pick our way past the traffic and get up towards the top ten again. Some of the guys were bouncing off one another and Jeff Green picked up a pretty severe tire rub. I had to go to the outside of him and just as I did the tire blew and we went into the wall. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It damaged the right front suspension enough to where we needed to spend a few laps behind the wall to get it fixed. The guys worked hard to get it to where we could at least make some laps and not lose as many spots as we could have."
With Bristol behind the team, Cook and crew leave for a two-day test at Richmond International Raceway.
"We are going to go test for a couple of days to see if we can't make our trucks just a little bit faster," Cook said. "Richmond is a place we can test for turns one and two at Gateway, turns one and two at Phoenix, and for New Hampshire. It's a good place to test for the rest of the flat tracks on the schedule. We're also going to try some other stuff - working with spindles and things like that - that can help us throughout the rest of the year."
Cook remains ninth in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship standings, 27 points behind Jack Sprague for eighth and 126 points behind Mike Skinner in fifth.
Next up for Terry Cook and the No. 60 Wyler.com Toyota Tundra is the Camping World 200 at the 1.25-mile Gateway International Raceway. SPEED will have the live telecast starting with a 30-minute pre-race show at 2 P.M. Eastern on Saturday September 6. MRN Radio will have the live radio call on select affiliates nationwide as well as on Sirius NASCAR Radio Channel 128.