It’s no secret, Darlington hasn’t been one of Team Penske’s strongest tracks. Yes, they finished 1-2 at the Lady in Black in 2018, but that was their only glory overall.

None of the three drivers looked very good back in May as Brad Keselowski was just 13th on May 17 and fourth on May 20. The fourth place run was via a solid run in the final stage. He and his teammates were no where to be found in the first couple of stages.

Joey Logano was 18th and sixth respectively while Ryan Blaney was 16th and 21st himself.

Now, can they salvage just top 10 days on Sunday and get to some better tracks for them in Richmond and Bristol?

Keselowski, is their best bet as he has three top five finishes in his last four Darlington starts. He only had two in his previous nine. Where he could be solid is, the Michigan native has 18 top 11 finishes in the last 20 races run overall.

For Logano, he just needs a solid outing. He has six top 10 finishes in his last seven races run and seven in the last nine. But, he also has finished 14th or worse in his last five Darlington starts too.

That leaves Blaney. He’s never had a top 10 in seven previous Darlington tries. His best finish is 13th (twice). He’s struggling with just one top five in his last 13 starts on the year too. Blaney, just needs an uneventful night because up next is Richmond, a place to where his best finish is 17th. That’s the track that he told me that he’s worried about.

“You look at Richmond, the second race there, it’s a place that we’ve struggled at over the years,” said Blaney. “You have to put a good race together. You can’t ride around in the back there. Obviously on the Richmond side, we can only be getting better there. I’ve worked a lot on that race track there. When we looked at the playoffs, we all said that we’ve got to do good at Richmond. That’s one of the biggest outliers to me for places that we need to show up and do well at that we’ve struggled at in the past.”

Then, it’s to Bristol to where he’s had a ton of speed and led a lot of laps at, he just hasn’t translated that over to top fives. If he can get by the first round, look out.

Blaney has been so good on road courses and superspeedway’s lately. They make up two of the three races in the Round of 12. If he can get out of the first round, he likely makes it to the Round of 8 by virtue of his strength on the second round tracks.

“The biggest key is not being off at the start of these races,” Blaney said. “Stage points are key. Stage points are very critical when running against 15 other guys. Stage points are huge so you definitely want to be starting off good.

“Even finishing off races with how the matrix is to set the next races’ lineup. You don’t want to be in the back among the playoff drivers at the start of the next race so preparation is huge which can set you up with the first stage which is important.”

Luckily for them, all three have accumulated enough playoff points to not have to worry as much too. Keselowski has 29 of them. Logano has 22. Blaney with 13. They’d prefer not to have to fall back on those though.

As Blaney notes, they don’t have a lot of them banked for the later rounds. The Round of 8 is where they matter the most because normally the top guys with them are still around they’re untouchable at that point. The ironic thing is, while Blaney didn’t get a lot of playoff points in the regular season, he feels like his car is better heading into this year’s playoffs than the last three he’s competed in.

“Our whole group feels pretty good,” Blaney said. “I feel like our car is pretty decent right now. I like our momentum. It’s just a matter of putting everything together. It’s just going to be important for us to win in the rounds. I feel like we can’t afford a blow up or something bad in the rounds. We can’t afford a mulligan. I’m not saying that we’re in the worst position. There’s guys in worse positions than me, but we just have to have a solid 10 races.”

Also, another good thing about the playoffs is, eight of the 10 tracks during the postseason, we’ve already raced at. So, while 2020 has led to a lot of uncertainty, there’s more clarity in the playoffs with all the data already accumulated so far at those tracks from this past year.

That certainly helps no one more than the Penske organization.

See, they swapped all three teams this offseason. While the drivers kept the same numbers and spotter, everything else changed around them. So, with the first four races having practice, you could see why they were doing well. They had time to learn each other over the course of the weekend.

Logano, 30, won two of the first four points paying races not including a Duel win in February to give him three wins in six tries counting the Clash and Duels with Paul Wolfe. Then, the pandemic hit. Logano, said that it hurt them. They had no practice or qualifying to learn each other. It’s not like Logano and Wolfe were new to these tracks. They’ve had tons of experiences on them. It’s just that, they’ve ever experienced these places together. They had to adjust and relearn and start over on their notebook.

“It feels like a long time ago way too long,” Logano said on Wednesday since his last win. “We’re ready to win again, but I do feel like we’re getting close back to that same point as we were.

“To me, there’s no doubt when we went back racing we weren’t where we wanted to be. I even said it a few times, almost like a lost puppy not knowing what road to go down to get back to where we need to be, and it’s hard to find that direction without practice.

“It took longer than we wanted it to, longer than we expected it to, but I feel like we’re getting really close back to where we were at the beginning of the year. We can get ourselves in position to win again and I feel like we’re right at it.”

That’s why Logano went through a stretch of one top five in the first 13 races back from the pandemic. He had just five top 10’s in those 13 races too. But, over the last nine races, he has scored seven top 10’s and three top fives in his No. 22 Ford.

Now that they’ve gotten back to the same page and learned enough of each other, plus going back to the same tracks again now, doesn’t that bode well for the playoffs?

He says this reminds him of this 2018 championship season.

“We need to continue to slowly build and become stronger as a team,” Logano continued. “You’re not going to find one thing that’s going to be a light switch that’s going to put us all the way to where (Kevin Harvick) and (Denny Hamlin) are, but we’re not far off.

“We’re two or three little things away from that and this year is just reminding me of 2018, which is a great season for me, where we had some growing pains and some things we had to learn throughout the regular season.

“We slowly built the speed back up for the playoffs and the next thing you know we won two of the most important races and we win the championship.”

Blaney agrees.

“With no practice, you’re relying on previous race notes,” he said. “Working with Jeremy (Bullins) for a long time from Xfinity to Cup then the transition to Todd (Gordon), the first month was awesome. You get to work with them full weekends. We get to see each other every single weekend and throughout the week. I mean everybody on the team. You get to learn each other. Now, it’s just been so limited. No practice and you can only talk so much on the phone throughout the week. It’s been different. We’ve done the best we can.

“I think it’s kind of neat when you switch crew chiefs for the first time, I mean when I was with Jeremy you kind of get locked into one mode. I mean we had our own language with each other. I know what he likes to change. He knows what I like as a driver. You kind of get in a certain mode whether it’s good or bad and not be open to a new kind of things. I know the biggest thing I learned when I switch to Todd is that everyone approaches things kind of differently. It just opened my minds things that we can try. It’s just knowledge of two different minds from two different guys.”