Kurt Busch tops Pocono Cup test

Busch, who won the event at the track last year, set a fastest lap of 53.111 seconds during the final session on Wednesday evening, running at an average speed of 169.456mph in his back up car.

"This track is very tough because we don't have the transmission option any more," Busch said. "We used to be able to shift from third to fourth gear and so now you're in fourth gear all the way around and you have to keep your momentum built up and that's moved all the cars to the top side of turn one.

"But the biggest challenge is the right-front camber and making sure that we don't blow up right-front tyres and still are able to make our cars turn with the proper amount of camber. I think that's one of the reasons why NASCAR chose to come here and test."

Mark Martin was second fastest running in the same tenth as Busch in the final session of the test. Behind them rookie Patrick Carpentier was an encouraging third fastest, running around a tenth off from the day's benchmark during the same session.

The Toyotas of Red Bull's AJ Allmendinger, JJ Yeley and Michael Waltrip were fourth, fifth and sixth fastest respectively, while points leader Kyle Busch rounded up the top-ten, running faster than Pocono-master and teammate Denny Hamlin.

Dario Franchitti had a successful return, setting the 12th fastest time, although he was around eight tenths of a second off from the quickest Dodge of the day.

Dale Earnhardt Jr had been quickest on Wednesday's morning session, while David Gilliland had been the fastest on Tuesday, when the rain prevented teams from completing the scheduled amount of running.

"The rain actually may have been a blessing in disguise because it gave all the engineers extra time to study the data," said Sprint Cup series director John Darby. "Looking at the times today, the whole garage has picked up speed."

The test gave teams the first opportunity to run at Pocono with the new Cup car, before they return in a week's time for round 14 of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.