Veteran racer Randy Cook has been in the league for a long time and has seen quite a lot. He's won races, championships, ran a race team and now he can finally call himself a Hall of Famer. Randy becomes the 11th different member voted into the Hall of Fame after appearing on the ballot for 4 years. Randy's highlights include a Cup championship and a LROC championship. He is the third different member to have a LROC championship prior to his induction into the Hall.
Randy started his career in Lucky Dog Racing way back in 2005. Most Lucky Dog Racing players these days start in the Truck series but the truck series wasn't in existence yet. Randy started in the Xfinity series... at that time it was the Busch series and it was the first year that we were running it. He started late in the year on October 8th 2005. He went by the team name of Racer29dude with just the name Randy... I guess he didn't trust us yet to use his last name.
Randy's first race was the United Way 300 at Kansas Speedway and his debut was a less than stellar finish of 20th place in a 28 driver field. After getting his feet wet in the first race, he followed it up with a nice 4th place finish in the next race at Charlotte. Two weeks later he won his very first career race at Texas on November 5, 2005. He also finished the season with top 10's in all of the remaining 5 races.
In his first full season in the league, Randy changed his team name to Randy Cook Racing and finished 23rd in 2006. That year he amassed 4 top 5's (which included a 3rd place finish) and 7 top 10's.
In 2007 he made the big show after getting promoted to the Cup series. He also started his first race in the inaugural season of the Truck series later that year as well. Randy had a great start to his Cup career after nearly winning his first race, the 2007 Daytona 500. He finished one spot short after coming in 2nd place.
The following week Randy made his first start in the Truck series with a 51st place finish at California. I guess that scared him off because Randy missed the next three starts and was removed from the league. He would later rejoin it later in the season and ran 17 races.
Randy won his first Cup series race at Infineon Raceway on June 23rd 2007 and later that year picked up his 2nd win at Texas, the same track that he won his first Busch race at. Randy won two races in the Busch series and so far his only win to date in the Truck series, Memphis on June 30th, 2007. The 2007 season was the the only season so far that he won a race in all three series.
After all the winning in 2007, he went winless the following season in 2008. Even though he did not win any races, he had good seasons in the Cup and the newly renamed Nationwide series. He finished 10th in Cup and 9th in Nationwide. One again Randy had left the Truck series at the start of the year but came back later and ran 9 races.
2008 was a pivotal year for the league, that was when we started using multi-car teams. Randy decided to expand his team Randy Cook Racing to a 3 car team and added Ray Perrotta and Jeffery Willett. Later on he expanded to 4 cars by adding Chris Agerton. The team had a decent first year after finishing 6 in the team standings.
2009 wasn't all that great for Randy, he did win his 3rd career Cup race at New Hampshire but struggled to a 31st place finish in both Cup and Truck. He did have a decent year in the Nationwide series after finishing in 11th. The 2009 season was the last one that Randy would run the Truck series until he returned in 2016.
The next three years were a struggle for Randy in both series. He finished 32, 20th and 38th in Cup and was a little better in Nationwide, finishing 16th, 22nd and 14th.
In 2015, Randy made the Chase for the 2nd time in the Cup series, his first since the 2008 season. He finished 10th place and equaled the amount of top 10's that he earned in 2008. The resurgence set himself up for his career season in 2015.
The 2015 didn't start out in any spectacular fashion for Randy, he finished 29th at Daytona but three races later he picked up the first win of the season, 7th of his career, at Phoenix. After that he had some good finishes to keep him him the top 10 for 9 weeks but then started to struggle after that. As the playoffs came up, he came close to falling out of contention but luckily held on to 22nd place and with his win it got him in.
He barely got through the first round after recording finishes of 20th, 26th and 17th. He finished in 11th place and was able to make the second round. The second round was better with a 17th place finish at Charlotte and 2nd at Kansas. The wildcard race at Talladega did not go well for him but he found himself in 8th place in the standings and moved to round 3.
Martinsville and Texas resulted in finishes of 26th and 20th but followed it up with a victory at Phoenix which put him into the final four.
Randy's competitors were Brian Blair, Jose Rodriguez and Ron Parlacoski, Jr. Homestead wasn't kind to any of them but Randy was able to finish in 16th place, six spots over Brian Blair. That gave Randy the Cup series championship and his first title in Lucky Dog Racing.
Randy was in the league 9 seasons before winning his first title. It was the 2nd longest wait for a championship, longest so far was 11 seasons when Stephen DiCaprio won in the Truck series.
Randy's championship allowed him to make the Lucky Dog Racing LROC team in 2016. He made the most of his opportunity by winning the championship which was his first in LROC and made it two championship years in a row.
Randy was able to make the playoffs for the 2nd year in a row and finished 10th in 2016. He also returned to the Truck series later that year.
The last couple of seasons have been a struggle for Randy in all three series however he has new ventures to look forward to. During the off-season, he finally shut down Randy Cook Racing after 10 years. In that time he had 8 different drivers race with him, a record for any team. He has teamed up with Jose Rodriguez to form Cook/Rodriguez Racing. This may allow him to get back to winning another championship.
One thing that won't change for Randy is that he can call himself a champion and now a Hall of Famer.
The previous year Randy lost the Hall of Fame by a close margin. The following year Randy won with a total of 14 points. 10 points came from the league wide voting where he received a total of 19 votes. 4 points came from the committee members.
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Career Highlights
2005-2018 Seasons
Cup Series
Won Championship in 2015
Finished in the top 10 four times
432 starts
10 victories
52 top 5's
93 top 10's
Made the Playoffs four times
Xfinity Series
Finished in the top 10 one time
446 starts
8 victories
50 top 5's
96 top 10's
Truck Series
110 starts
1 victory
7 top 5's
18 top 10's
LROC Series
Won Championship in 2016
Qualified for the series under LDR 3 times
2 victories
49 starts
12 top 5's
21 top 10's
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