THIS WEEK IN FORD RACING

Brooklyn, Mich. - Terry Cook, driver of the No. 10 F-150, returns to his hometown track of Michigan International Speedway this weekend for the Craftsman Truck Series Con-way Freight 200.

The 11-year Craftsman Truck Series veteran is currently 11th in the driver point standings, 63 points out of the top five, heading into Saturday’s race at the two-mile oval. Cook commented about the impact the manufacturers play in the truck series and his childhood memories of watching races at Michigan Speedway.

IS THERE A GREATER SIGNIFICANCE TO A RACE HELD IN THE BACKYARD OF THE BIG THREE MANUFACTURERS?
“There is a little bit. It puts a little added pressure on the race than it might already have. We kind of treat every track the same whether it’s Michigan, Daytona or Mansfield. It’s 185 or 190 points up for grabs for the win, and at the end of the day that’s what you’re there to get—as many points as you can. And, if you’re collecting points then you’re collecting money and winning races. It may be a little bit.

“The fact that we’re going to go up on Thursday to do some stuff at the Ford World Headquarters, and we'll see a lot of the Ford people the day before we show up to the track, you know it has greater importance. But for me, growing up in the Ohio region … we could throw a stone out of our backyard and into Michigan … that’s how close to the Michigan border we grew up.

“I consider this my closest home track. I know I have four home tracks, but this is in theory my hometown track. I can remember sitting up there as a kid back in the late ’70s watching Bobby Allison, Buddy Baker, Cale Yarborough, Richard Petty—all of the greats—back when they had chrome bumpers on the cars and watching some great races. And then finally to get a chance to race there in the late ’90s, that was a pretty cool deal.

“Fortunately for me, I’ve been successful there. I’ve run very competitively every time we’ve been there, but we just haven’t been able to put the finishing results with it to get that win or top-five that we’ve been looking for. We’ve just been right there every year, and to me, as a driver, this has got to be one of the tracks that I look most forward to every year. This is definitely a driver’s track, and I don’t know how you couldn’t like Michigan.

“All we ask for week in and week out as a driver is to go to a race track and have multiple grooves to race on, and this one is unlimited. From the top of the fence to the bottom of the track right at the apron, you can run anywhere in between, lap after lap. When you have a race track that produces that kind of racing, it’s always exciting and it’s fun for the drivers because if you’re not handling on the top you go to the bottom, and if you’re not handling on the bottom you go to the top. That’s what I like about that facility.”

A LOT OF RACES EARLY IN THE SEASON WERE CHARACTERIZED BY A RECORD NUMBER OF CAUTIONS FLAG. AT MICHIGAN, DO YOU EXPECT TO SEE MORE GREEN-FLAG RACING?
“Yeah, I think we’ve kind of gotten away from that a little bit. I think the rookie class—and I’m not blaming the rookie class for a lot of the cautions—but I think the rookie class as a whole has excelled this year and they’ve gotten a lot better each and every week, and I think that’s one reason why we’re not seeing as many cautions now as we were in the beginning of the season.

“Whenever you can get to a race track that’s wide and fairly forgiving—Kentucky and Indianapolis Raceway Park are examples—where you have a lot of racing room, and Michigan is definitely at the top of that list because of the fact that it’s so wide with a lot of racing room that it is very forgiving. So, if you get yourself in trouble, you’ve got a lot of runoff area, where you can save your truck without making contact with the wall. You’re not getting off course, but in essence you are, you’re getting out of the groove that you’ve been running, but there is still a lot of groove with a lot of grip, either up there or down there to provide you room to save the race vehicle if you get it out of shape.

"I think any time you go to facility that is very wide, that’s where you see the green-flag runs because people have a lot more mess-up room.”

IS THERE A GREATER SIGNIFICANCE TO THE MANUFACTURERS' RACE IN THE TRUCK SERIES COMPARED TO CUP AND BUSCH?
“I think so to a certain degree. I hear it from a lot of people. They say, 'I don’t care where I finish as long as I finish ahead of all of the Toyotas' each week. It depends on who you’re talking to. A few years back I thought that the Ford camp was working very closely together week in and week out. This year, we’re not working quite as closely as we used to, but we’re still working together.

“You see week in and week out, nine Toyota teams working basically as one and that’s tough to beat. So it’s like nine race teams collecting data lap after lap during practice sessions and they share that with each other prior to qualifying and the race, so that’s kind of hard to beat when you do that week in and week out. The camaraderie … ‘Yeah, if I can’t win the race or can’t run up in the front, I want another Ford to win.’ … and I think the other Ford teams feel the same way.

"You always want to be first in class and you always want to win the race, and at the end of the day, you want to make your manufacturer proud of you. Yes, there is a lot more of that in the truck series than the Busch Series and Cup Series, for sure.”

DO YOU THINK ABOUT BEING BEST IN CLASS AT THE TRACK OR MORE AT THE SHOP?
“I think it’s more of a thing when you get back to the shop. For example, say you finish sixth or seventh in the race and you look back and think, ‘It was good race. It wasn’t too bad.’ And maybe you struggled all weekend, so you look through the results and you realize a certain manufacturer wasn’t as competitive that week. You look at yourself first and you know where your shortcomings may have been, and then you look at your manufacturer’s program. There has definitely been tracks over the years that traditionally favor one manufacturer, and I think Michigan Speedway has favored the Fords over the years.

“You saw Dodge, the first manufacturer that went through the transition of developing their new motor. Each year to make them more competitive, NASCAR did a good job of slowly allowing them to get better engine parts. I think that was their downfall when they first got involved in the truck series, they just didn’t have a very good motor program. Over a period of four to five years they continuously increased the motor program to where it was pretty good, and then when they decided to go Nextel Cup racing they told NASCAR, ‘Our motor package that we developed in the truck series is good, but not good enough to be successful in Cup, so we’d like to develop a new motor.’ NASCAR gave them a clean sheet of paper, and they went out and developed a new motor, which was a nice piece, where Chevrolet and Ford were still basically running the same concept motor they built back in the late ’50s.

“When Toyota came on board, not even having a pushrod motor, but basically saying they wanted to be a part of NASCAR, they had to design a complete new motor. But the luxury they had, they could go out and purchase 10 Ford motors, 10 Chevrolet motors and 10 Dodge motors and run them on dynos and test them at the track and dissect them to figure the best parts from each motor to make the best motor they could. When you get a new manufacturer that comes in like that and they have to develop a new motor, I think with today’s technology they have an advantage over the other teams when they decide to come into the sport. There’s a reason why Toyota jumped in and was successful right off the bat. If they started off on the ground floor like Ford and Chevrolet did, they would be in the back for 10 to 15 years.”