Terry Cook (born February 26, 1968) is an American former
stock car racing
Stock car racing is a form of automobile racing run on oval tracks and road courses measuring approximately . It originally used production-model cars, hence the name "stock car", but is now run using cars specifically built for racing. It ori ...
driver, best known for his time in the
NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series is a pickup truck racing series owned and operated by the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, and is the only series in NASCAR to race production pickup truck based stock cars. The series is one of thr ...
(now Camping World Truck Series). He was married to former Craftsman Truck pit reporter Amy East, and
brother-in-law
A sibling-in-law is the spouse of one's sibling, or the sibling of one's spouse, or the person who is married to the sibling of one's spouse.Cambridge Dictionaries Online.Family: non-blood relations.
More commonly, a sibling-in-law is referred ...
to driver
Bobby East. He was previously the spotter and driver coach for the late
John Wes Townley
John Wesley Townley (December 31, 1989 – October 2, 2021) was an American professional stock car racing driver. He competed in NASCAR's Xfinity and Truck Series from 2008 to 2016, winning a race in the latter in 2015.
Townley's father Tony is a ...
and
Athenian Motorsports, after serving as the competition director for
Red Horse Racing
Red Horse Racing was an American professional stock car racing team that last competed in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. The team was based in Mooresville, North Carolina. It was co-owned by former Mobil 1 marketing executive Tom DeLoach a ...
.
Early and personal life
Terry Cook is the son of Harold Cook, a former driver and mechanic, and Laureen Cook. He also has a brother Jerry (not to be confused with the
NASCAR Hall of Famer of
the same name), who competed in a single Truck Series race and seven
ARCA Racing Series
The ARCA Menards Series is an American stock car series, the premier division of the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA). It is considered a minor, semi-professional league of stock car racing, used as a feeder series into the three national ...
events. The two brothers worked on father Harold's car as teenagers.
Cook graduated from
Sylvania Northview High School in 1986, two years after his brother.
Racing career
![Lance Norick L&R Racing Dodge 1998](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Lance_Norick_L%26R_Racing_Dodge_1998.jpg)
Cook began racing on a professional level in 1987 at
Flat Rock Speedway
Flat Rock Speedway is a race track in Monroe County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is located in Ash Township just south of the city of Flat Rock along U.S. Route 24. Opened in 1953, it is owned by ARCA and is the sister track to Toledo ...
and
Toledo Speedway
Toledo Speedway is a half-mile paved oval racetrack located in Toledo, Ohio, United States. It is owned jointly by Roy Mott and ARCA President Ron Drager. It is operated by ARCA and run as the sister track to Flat Rock Speedway in Flat Rock, M ...
,
collecting eleven wins in his first year of competition. Cook doubled his win total in 1988 before he moved up to super late models. He won the track championship in 1989 and 1990 at
Flat Rock Speedway
Flat Rock Speedway is a race track in Monroe County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is located in Ash Township just south of the city of Flat Rock along U.S. Route 24. Opened in 1953, it is owned by ARCA and is the sister track to Toledo ...
. Cook then went on to win the Super Late Model Championship at
Toledo Speedway
Toledo Speedway is a half-mile paved oval racetrack located in Toledo, Ohio, United States. It is owned jointly by Roy Mott and ARCA President Ron Drager. It is operated by ARCA and run as the sister track to Flat Rock Speedway in Flat Rock, M ...
in 1992 and again at
Sandusky Speedway
Sandusky Speedway is a half-mile automobile race track located south of the city of Sandusky in Perkins Township, Erie County, Ohio, United States. The track features low banking in the turns and long straightaways. It has a layout similar to ...
in 1995.
Cook was set to make his
NASCAR
The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. The privately owned company was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1948, and hi ...
Craftsman Truck Series
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series is a pickup truck racing series owned and operated by the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, and is the only series in NASCAR to race production pickup truck based stock cars. The series is one of th ...
debut in 1995, but an injury at Toledo curtailed those plans.
Cook made his Truck Series debut in
1996
File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...
at
The Milwaukee Mile
The Milwaukee Mile is a oval race track in the central United States, located on the grounds of the Wisconsin State Fair Park in West Allis, Wisconsin, a suburb west of Milwaukee. Its grandstand and bleachers seats approximately 37,000 spectator ...
. Qualifying the #88
Sealmaster Racing
ThorSport Racing is an American professional stock car racing team that currently competes in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. The team was founded in 1996 as SealMaster Racing and is based in Sandusky, Ohio. Owned by Duke Thorson and his wife ...
(now ThorSport Racing)
Chevrolet Silverado
The Chevrolet Silverado is a range of trucks manufactured by General Motors under the Chevrolet brand. Introduced for the 1999 model year, the Silverado is the successor to the long running Chevrolet C/K model line. Taking its name from th ...
24th, he finished 24th, three laps down. He ran two additional races that season for Sealmaster, finishing 23rd at
Phoenix International Raceway
Phoenix Raceway is a 1-mile, low-banked tri-oval race track located in Avondale, Arizona, near Phoenix. The motorsport track opened in 1964 and currently hosts two NASCAR race weekends annually including the final championship race since 2020. P ...
. In 1997, Cook ran fifteen races during the season, with sponsorship from the
PBA Tour
The PBA Tour is the major professional tour for ten-pin bowling, operated by the Professional Bowlers Association. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, over 3,000 members worldwide make up the PBA. While most of the PBA members are Regional profess ...
. He won his first career pole at
Flemington Speedway
Flemington Speedway was a motor racing circuit in Flemington, New Jersey which operated from 1915 to 2002. The track was once known for being the fastest 5/8 dirt track in the United States.
Early history
Flemington Speedway was created as a ...
and posted a best finish of fifteenth twice.
Cook ran the full schedule in
1998
1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''.
Events January
* January 6 – The '' Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently ...
. He won his first career race at Flemington
and had six top-ten finishes, ending the season 20th in the final points. Due to a lack of primary sponsorship in
1999
File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shootin ...
, Cook only posted three top-ten finishes before
Big Daddy's BBQ Sauce
Big or BIG may refer to:
* Big, of great size or degree
Film and television
* ''Big'' (film), a 1988 fantasy-comedy film starring Tom Hanks
* '' Big!'', a Discovery Channel television show
* ''Richard Hammond's Big'', a television show present ...
came on board towards the end of the season, when he finished fifteenth in the standings. In 2000
PickupTruck.combecame the team's primary sponsor, and despite seven top-tens, Cook was released with one race to go for
Matt Crafton
Matthew Justin Crafton (born June 11, 1976) is an American professional stock car racing driver. He is a three-time champion of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (2013, 2014, 2019), in which he competes full-time, driving the No. 88 Ford F-150 ...
. He drove for
K Automotive Racing
Keselowski Motorsports, formerly known as K-Automotive Racing and Brian Keselowski Motorsports, is a stock car racing team in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. K-Automotive previously raced in ARCA and the Nationwide Series. K-Automotive is ow ...
at the season finale, finishing seventh. He drove K Automotive's #29
Ford F-150
The Ford F-Series is a series of light-duty trucks marketed and manufactured by Ford since the 1948 model year. Slotted above the Ford Ranger in the Ford truck model range, the F-Series is marketed as a range of full-sized pickup trucks. ...
full-time in 2001, winning the pole at
Nazareth Speedway
Nazareth Speedway was an auto racing facility near Nazareth in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania which operated from 1910 to 2004 in two distinct course configurations. In its early years, it was a dirt twin oval layout. In 1987 it was reo ...
and finishing a career-high seventh in points.
![KPowerStroke](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/KPowerStroke.jpg)
In
2002
File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...
, Cook won a career best four races and two poles, but dropped to eighth in points. He won an additional two poles in
2003
File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...
, but did not finish in the top-five all season. He joined
ppc Racing
ppc Racing is a former NASCAR team based in Mooresville, North Carolina. The team was owned by Greg Pollex. ppc Racing came about from a merger of Pollex's Busch Series team with a car owned by Steve DeSouza and Ted Campbell in 1999. The tea ...
's fledgling truck team in
2004
2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO).
Events January
* January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...
. Despite winning the pole at the season-opening
Florida Dodge Dealers 250
The NextEra Energy 250 is the first race of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season at Daytona International Speedway and as of 2004 has been held under the lights. It is the Truck Series event of Speedweeks – the series of races leading u ...
, he dropped to sixteenth in the standings. He moved up one spot in points in
2005
File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...
after posting two top-fives.
In
2006
File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...
, Cook grabbed a win at Kansas Speedway and finished eighth in points. With no sponsorship at ppc, he left the team after the 2006 season to replace
Chad Chaffin
Chad Chaffin (born July 20, 1968) is an American former stock car racing driver.
Chaffin has raced in all three of NASCAR's major series. He was a two-time track champion at the historic Nashville Speedway USA, where he met his friend, Andy Ki ...
at
HT Motorsports
HT Motorsports was an American truck racing team from Martinsville, Virginia, owned by trucking company owner Jim Harris. It fielded entries for the nine years in the Camping World Truck Series before suspending operations early in 2010.
Truc ...
. He had four top tens and finished fourteenth in points, but was released at the end of the season. He signed to drive for
Wyler Racing
Turn One Racing (formerly Wyler Racing) was an American NASCAR motor racing team that competed in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. The team was owned by Ohio car dealer Jeff Wyler until 2009 when driver Stacy Compton bought the assets of Wy ...
in 2008 and had an additional seven top-tens but was released before the season was over in favor of
Jack Sprague
Jack Sprague (born August 8, 1964) is an American former stock car racing driver who has competed in all of NASCAR's three top divisions, most notably in the Craftsman Truck Series, where he won series championships in 1997, 1999 and 2001.
Rac ...
. He immediately rejoined HT Motorsports for the remainder of the season. At the end of 2008, HT renumbered his truck to the #25, and Cajun Industries and Harris Trucking shared sponsorship duties of the truck. With two races to go in the season, Cook was released from HT. He drove the next race in the #02
Koma Unwind
Bebida Beverage Company is a company which manufactures Koma Unwind, a carbonated, berry flavored relaxation drink with melatonin, milk thistle, rose hips and valerian root as ingredients.
Products
Koma Unwind is made in several varieties: Reg ...
Chevy for Corrie Stott Racing, but was unable to find a ride for the season-ending
Ford 200
The Baptist Health 200 is an annual 200-mile (321.869 km) NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race held at the Homestead–Miami Speedway in Homestead, Florida. The race began as a 250-mile race in 1996, but beginning with the 2002 season, the ...
, ending a streak of 296 consecutive races started in the Truck Series.
In addition to his Truck Series efforts, Cook made several starts for
MSRP Motorsports (now Phil Parsons Racing) in the
Nationwide Series
The NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS) is a stock car racing series organized by NASCAR. It is promoted as NASCAR's second-tier circuit to the organization's top level Cup Series. NXS events are frequently held as a support race on the day prior to a ...
. In 2008, Cook ran 7 Nationwide races with MSRP, followed by twenty 2009 races, failed to qualify for three races. All of Cook's Nationwide starts were
start-and-parks.
![JJ Yeley Whitney Motorsports Chevrolet Charlotte May 2011](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/JJ_Yeley_Whitney_Motorsports_Chevrolet_Charlotte_May_2011.jpg)
Cook was signed to drive the #46 Dodge in the
Sprint Cup Series
The NASCAR Cup Series is the top racing series of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR). The series began in 1949 as the Strictly Stock Division, and from 1950 to 1970 it was known as the Grand National Division. In 1971 ...
for the newly formed
Whitney Motorsports
Whitney Motorsports was a NASCAR team that competed in the Sprint Cup Series. It was based in Huntersville, North Carolina.
Sprint Cup Series
Car No. 46 History
Dusty Whitney, owner of Whitney Motorsports, was involved with K-Automotive Motorsp ...
in 2010. The cars were former
Richard Petty Motorsports
Richard Petty Motorsports (RPM) was an American professional stock car racing team that competed in the NASCAR Cup Series. The team was founded as a result of the merger between Gillett Evernham Motorsports (GEM) and Petty Enterprises, with ...
Dodges purchased after RPM's switch to Ford. Cook would run for
Rookie of the Year against
Kevin Conway.
The team failed to make the first four races of 2010. Cook made a total of three starts in the #46 while failing to qualify for 7 races. He parted ways with Whitney Motorsports after Richmond. He attempted one race with
Phoenix Racing but failed to qualify. He then attempted Martinsville in the fall with Prism Motorsports, but he failed to qualify.
In 2010, Cook was hired as a drivers coach for Truck Series team
Red Horse Racing
Red Horse Racing was an American professional stock car racing team that last competed in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. The team was based in Mooresville, North Carolina. It was co-owned by former Mobil 1 marketing executive Tom DeLoach a ...
, assisting driver
Justin Lofton
Justin Lofton (born February 18, 1986) is an American professional off-road racing driver. He also competes in stock car racing, driving part-time in the ARCA Menards Series West in the No. 30 Ford for Rette Jones Racing. Lofton formerly competed ...
. Cook became the team's competition director in 2011, serving that position until 2014.
In 2015, he was hired by Truck and
Xfinity Series
The NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS) is a stock car racing series organized by NASCAR. It is promoted as NASCAR's second-tier circuit to the organization's top level Cup Series. NXS events are frequently held as a support race on the day prior to a ...
team
Athenian Motorsports, serving as a driver coach and spotter for drivers
John Wes Townley
John Wesley Townley (December 31, 1989 – October 2, 2021) was an American professional stock car racing driver. He competed in NASCAR's Xfinity and Truck Series from 2008 to 2016, winning a race in the latter in 2015.
Townley's father Tony is a ...
and
Dylan Lupton
Dylan Jarin Lupton (born December 7, 1993) is an American professional stock car racing driver who last competed part-time in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, driving the No. 7 Chevrolet Silverado for Spire Motorsports. He has also competed ...
.
Cook remains a popular figure in the garage area and among fans.
Motorsports career results
NASCAR
(
key
Key or The Key may refer to:
Common meanings
* Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm
* Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock
* Key (map ...
) (
Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. ''Italics'' – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led.)
Sprint Cup Series
=Daytona 500
=
Nationwide Series
Camping World Truck Series
ARCA SuperCar Series
(
key
Key or The Key may refer to:
Common meanings
* Key (cryptography), a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm
* Key (lock), device used to control access to places or facilities restricted by a lock
* Key (map ...
) (
Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. ''Italics'' – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led.)
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cook, Terry
1968 births
Living people
People from Sylvania, Ohio
Racing drivers from Ohio
NASCAR drivers
ARCA Menards Series drivers