Rain washes out both Cup practice sessions at Pocono (cont'd)

David Gilliland, driver of the No. 38 Ford who will start third Sunday, said he will have to rely on notes from Pocono's June race.

"We unloaded in race trim yesterday and we're fairly happy with our car," Gilliland said. "We would have definitely liked to have gotten some laps in, I think everybody here would have, but I don't think we're really too concerned about it. Our Ford was pretty fast."

Gilliland's crew chief Cully Barraclough said knowing the team rolled off the truck in good shape was reassuring.

"There's always a menu of stuff that we would like to try to improve our car, like everyone else, and a lot of these teams have a lot more experience here than us, but with the new car everybody is trying to build a new catalog of tools in their chest to improve their car for certain things," Barraclough said. "We just need a little bit here and a little bit there to make the car what we think will be drivable on the long run, so that makes you feel a little bit better when it rains."

Pemberton added practice is relative to the rest of the people around you.

"I feel confident. Our car is better than it was the last time here and we made some adjustments to it," he said. "It could work out in our favor. I feel better about the situation than where we were here in June. We have a couple parallels from last time we'll use and make our adjustments from there. We made two short race runs yesterday and that set the tone for us."

Rookie Regan Smith in the No. 01 Chevy for Dale Earnhardt Inc. was likely the most disappointed of the Cup drivers speaking on the rained-out practice session and will be searching through his notes from the last Pocono race.

"It's definitely not ideal," Smith said. "I think the biggest thing for us was we really wanted to try some new stuff that we've been working on and we're not going to get an opportunity to do that now which kind of stinks."

In Friday's only practice session, which lasted 90 minutes, two-time Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson led the speed chart with a lap of 168.215 mph and later went on to grab the pole in qualifying.

Mark Martin was second fastest and qualified second, respectively. Carl Edwards, Jeff Gordon and Martin Truex Jr. rounded out the top-five fastest during practice.