Kurt Busch tops final day at Lowe's

Despite being the best on the second day of testing, Busch's lap of 29.088 seconds set in the evening session did not match the 28.887 second benchmark set during the first day of running by Ganassi driver David Stremme.

Robert Yates Racing driver Ricky Rudd finished day two as second fastest with a lap of 29.097 seconds in his No. 88 Ford Fusion, ahead of Toyota's Jeremy Mayfield, who rounded-up a good test for Bill Davis Racing.

Behind him, rookie A.J. Allmendinger was an impressive fourth fastest in his first visit to the track, and hopes the two-day test will help put his car on the grid for the Coca-Cola 600 in two weeks time.

"I'm comfortable and that was the first thing that everybody told me to do when I got to this track," the Red Bull driver said. "I've watched a lot of races here and been told how fast this place is. Just making laps here and getting used to the race track -- getting in the groove of that makes me happy about what we are accomplishing."

Once again the topic of the day at Lowe's was the low grip coming from the tyre selected by Goodyear for the test, which is also expected to be raced in the NASCAR Nextel All-Star Challenge and the Coca-Cola 600.

"The tyres don't wear at all, so you could probably run the same set all night," said Kasey Kahne, who won last year's May race at Lowe's on the same tyres. "But they would get bad after a while because they'd be too hot. If you let them cool down and put them back on later in the race, they'd probably be pretty good."

Denny Hamlin, who returned to the track after his wreck on day one, struggled like most drivers to make the tyres work. His best lap from day two was nearly three tenths off from his best time of day one.

"We can't get our car working together with the tyre and the track," Hamlin said. "The tyre is so hard. It's frustrating for us to have to race with this tyre. We're trying to do everything we can to make it work."

Kyle Busch, who finished day two in 17th with the only lap he set in his back-up car, was also critical of the tyres run by all 52 teams during the test. "The tyres suck," he said. "We're not that fast, so we've got work to do."

Nextel Cup teams have packed up and will meet again this weekend at Darlington Raceway for the Dodge Charger 500, where they will switch again to the Car of Tomorrow.