If you remember way back to March, you would have seen that Ryan Blaney has had the quickest race car each race, Joey Logano has won almost half of the races run and Brad Keselowski had three finishes of 11th or better.

But, can that translate well over to Darlington? Their speed was lacking overall on Sunday. By virtue of that, they all had some good starting spots on Wednesday.

All three Penske cars will rolled off inside of the top eight. That’s because they didn’t finish up front on Sunday.

Unfortunately, they never were “real” factors on Wednesday night. It took some hard efforts and pit strategy to get two cars in the top six when it was all said and done.

Logano, jumped out to an early lead in leading 19 of the first 27 laps. That’s because he started up front and was around guys who normally aren’t. His No. 22 Ford faded to fifth in Stage 1, ninth in Stage 2 and was outside the top 10 for most of the final stage before coming back to a sixth place result. Logano, was 12th and eighth respectively in the two stages on Sunday and just 18th in the race. While he’ll take the top 10, the speed just wasn’t there. He’ll take it for now.

“Our race was hard fought, blue collar,” Logano said. “A lot of it was where you placed yourself, so it was just like last week.  Strategy calls that can play out the right way and being on the top lane for the restarts was what it was all about.  There was only one long run in these two races.  I feel like, overall, I’d say we maximized our day, but I also feel like if we had one more restart being sixth it’s a pretty sure bet you’re gonna get to fourth and with Denny (Hamlin) out there on old tires he was gonna be a sitting duck for Brad (Keselowski) for sure, and, most likely, a lot of cars would have got by him once he lost that clean air.  So I wish we ran a little bit more, but, overall, we made improvements from the first race.  I’m proud of that and we’re off to the 600.”

Strategy calls helped Keselowski too. He was great with clean air on Sunday, but he faded to a 13th place finish in the end. He started eighth on Wednesday by virtue of that. The Michigan native was fifth and first respectively in the two stages and even led 80 laps this past weekend. But, as the race went on, his No. 2 Ford went away. He was a non factor all night with a finish of 16th and 14th in the two stages. He got a fourth place result via a gamble to stay out on a longer fuel stint which was helped by a caution in the middle of it.

“I thought we were in a really good spot,” Keselowski said of his late race gamble. “We had made kind of an aggressive, bold move to stay out on the long run there and it was looking like it was going to pay off.  The yellow came out and we hit pit road and lost a few spots there, which was a bummer, but we cycled back to fourth right when the caution came out and were in position to have the optimum lane and be behind a car that had older tires.   I was licking my chops, but the rain never gave us a chance. Just part of the way it goes.  We weren’t the fastest car today, but I thought we persisted and put ourselves in a spot to potentially steal a race win and just came up a tiny bit short, but that’s a part of it.”

Blaney, still has failed to score a top 10 at Darlington as he came away 16th on Sunday and 21st on Wednesday. He now has finishes of 30th, 13th, 31st, 15th, 13th, 16th and 21st respectively on the “Lady in Black.”

Next up is Charlotte, a track that Penske has struggled at in the past. They may not get out of a slump until June.