Busch, No. 18 team able to use Pocono as test session (cont'd)

Indeed, as Busch started the Pennsylvania 500 in 27th, but was running in the top 10 by Lap 30. He stayed there for more than a third of the race, before rain, the threat of rain and scuffing the wall with the whole right side of his car tightened its handling characteristics.

Still, Busch was fifth with 10 laps to go and Addington smiled at his car's performance, even as he contemplated how it fell from fifth to 36th in less than two laps.

Busch abruptly came to pit road on the 199th lap, violating the "commitment line" at the pit entrance. He stalled the car trying to leave his pit stall, lost a lap and thus was never forced to serve his pass-through penalty.

"It's never simple," Addington said. "This was a crazy race. We tried some different stuff on this car, this weekend -- trying to get better on the flat tracks.

"And the car was better than we have been on the flat racetracks, so I feel really good about that. We weren't in the class of the guys that were leading -- that 9 car [June Pocono winner Kasey Kahne] was the class of the field, to me [because] they've figured something out.

"But you know, taking a chance like that [in the closing stages] -- we were good to go 'til the end and I don't know what happened. We got worse fuel mileage, by a bunch, from all the runs all day long, so we're just kinda scratching our heads on that one.

"We went off the numbers that we had been getting all day long and I don't understand why we didn't get to the end. We should have made it to the stripe and just don't totally understand why we got worse fuel mileage at the last run of the day."

Addington said the crushing finish aside, he was still satisfied with the comeback the team made from the June race. Then, Busch started 10th but quickly fell back before making a mistake, crashing and finishing last.

"I feel a lot better about the car than what we've had in the past," Addington said. "It gave us a direction on which to work in, and that's what we'll work in.

"We're going to test in the next two or three weeks, we'll work on that and make it better. We'll test at Iowa, Gateway and Milwaukee, and we'll probably do a little short track somewhere before we get to Martinsville."