Reidsville, NC ~ One of the crowd favorites, Rodney Cook, has been talked about a lot lately. Cook. has one of the bigger fan bases around, and so far this year, the question “Where is Rodney running at this year?” has come up more than once. Well I got to chat with him and find out just where he’ll be……….everywhere.
CL: Whats up Mr. Cook
RC: Nothing much, just working.
CL: You know what I’m going to ask you don’t you?
RC: Of course. I’ll be at ACE this Friday but I’m not taking my Ford, I’m not adding weight if they are already taking it off on the Chevrolet’s. The reason I was going to begin with was because my sponsor wanted me to take the Ford, but I’ll just take my Chevrolet and blend in with everybody else I guess. But I’ll be alright, it will be good.
CL: I won’t argue with that. So where are you running full time at this year, if anywhere?
RC: Well, i was planning on running Caraway last week, but we went down there to practice and got in about 8 laps and it rained, so that was a waste of a day. then i got a call from a guy wanting me to run South Boston, and he was gonna put up some money, so we went there. That’s the way I’m racing this year, I wasn’t getting anything down there, and he offered me a little so I went.
CL: So your not running for a championship anywhere this year?
RC: Nope. I’m week to week, anywhere I want to go. I’d like to get out and run at Tri-County some, I’ve never run up there, but I’ve seen a lot about it. I don’t know, I ain’t got a whole lot of money to do nothing, so this year I’m just gonna take it a week at a time. I really wanna go there though. If I have to buy a set of tires, I’m gonna go where I want to, and they run on Friday’s so that was my intentions. I love racing, and I’m gonna do it as much as I can, but i have to finish better than I did last week at South Boston.
CL: Seen where you finished 10th, what was the story on that?
RC: On my part, I was running 9th and they had a chain reaction right in front of me, I did a 360 to avoid it and kept going, I never stopped. Ronald Hill and all them behind me plowed into it, they stopped they were in a the wreck. Man, they put me back to 17th, I mean I did a complete 360 and never stopped, i never lost my forward motion. Well I was mad, and drove the wheels off of it and burnt the right rear off of it. It was already tight in the center, and i should have done more testing to begin with, it was just one of those deals. I mean it was tough up there, they had 24 cars and 20 of them were really stout. I took it and went on about my business. Lynn Carroll was up there, and they impounded the top 10 cars, went over them with a fine tooth comb. They were checking the oil thickness, they were checking everything. And they pulled the top three motors.
CL: They pulled the top 3 makes didn’t they?
RC: Yeah, Dustin Storm got out of that because C.E. Falk was ahead of him in a Chevrolet. They were supposed to find something out about them today. Honestly, I think they should just do away with the Dodge and the Ford and just have everybody running Chevy’s, then there would be no question on anything. I have both, but it just seems to be a headache if you win in something other than a Chevy.
CL: Sounds like you had a good car though up there to come back like that. If you hadn’t been put back and had to run so hard, do you think you had a top 5 car?
RC: I think I could have. I mean i was running all over Deac’s rear-end until the last 15 laps and he was about the fastest car there. I just got so mad when they put me back there in 17th, i abused it bad, I was passing cars on the outside to get back to 10th and just burned my stuff up.
CL: Well hopefully you can keep that aggression under control and bring home as many wins as you had last year.
RC: (laughing) I hope so, I’ve been trying to do that for years, I’m still winning races, maybe if that happens I’ll be dangerous. It’s just going to be a relief this year to run where I want when I want, I’m really looking forward to it.
