BLOG: Keselowski's Race Could Have Hinged on Dryers

Sometimes, it's the little things that mean a lot.

Brad Keselowski's Duck Commander 500 nearly ended before it began, through no fault of his own. The front of his car was damaged when it ran past the jet dryer during the pace laps and on the first lap of the race under the green and yellow flags.

Several cars doing the same thing had their roof flaps and cowl flaps deployed by the super-powered air blast and were forced to come to pit road to have them reset.

“I guess we’ve got to build cars that withstand jet dryers,” Penske crew chief Paul Wolfe told his team on their in-car radio.

NASCAR allowed Keselowski — as well as Ryan Newman, Danica Patrick, Travis Kvapil and Justin Allgaier for hood and roof flaps — to come down pit road before the race went fully green.