Jace Hansen Shines in Top-Five Showing at Snowball Derby

Jace Hansen impressed in the 57th Annual Snowball Derby, leading laps and finishing in the top five on Sunday at Five Flags Speedway.

Hansen finished fourth in the event, leading 17 laps in the event in an impressive drive for the Colorado native.

Hansen scored a top-10 finish in the 2022 edition of the Snowball Derby. However, a partnership with crew chief Preston Peltier elevated Hansen into a contender against the best Super Late Model teams in the country.

“Without him, we wouldn’t be able to do what we did today,” said Hansen regarding Peltier. “I’ve raced against him for the last six or seven years. I’ve always tried to talk to him. He’s one of those guys that’s hard to have a conversation with. He just sticks to himself. He doesn’t really put himself out there, he focuses on what he does.

“He was just so confident with how good his car was last year before the pile-up. He has so many notes and so much data. He was confident the minute we picked the car up. He said, ‘If we’re going to the Derby, I know we’re going to be good. I know we’re going to be competitive.’”

That confidence proved contagious for Hansen. Peltier saw the path to compete among the front-runners, and Hansen executed the plan.

“That confidence wears on a driver, you know? When you’ve got a guy that’s turning the wrenches on it, making the calls. He told me last night sitting on the couch at the Airbnb watching the Pro race, we’ve got a top-five car if everything goes right.

“We proved it today. In my opinion, I think we were even better than that, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to show that to everybody. Still, the fact that we were up there, led laps and racing with those guys that race full-time was a big deal for our little team.”

Even with that confidence and a fast race car, sometimes a little luck goes a long way in the Snowball Derby. During the first 75 laps of the race, Hansen drove into the top 10 after qualifying 20th.

Under the mandatory caution at lap 75, the No. 08 team opted to save a set of tires rather than putting on four fresh Hoosiers. Most of the competition went the other direction by utilizing their first tire change.

On the older tires, Hansen fell back outside the top 20 and nearly lost a lap, saved by a timely caution. That allowed him to change tires at lap 116, charging through the field with the fresher rubber and taking the lead from Ty Majeski on lap 191.

While the team was confident the lap 75 caution was too early in the race for fresh tires, the timely caution was a stroke of good fortune that kept them in the race.

“That is 100 percent luck,” said Hansen. “We just couldn’t wrap our heads around the fact that everyone put tires on that early on an 80-lap run. We’ve run here numerous years, this is our fourth Derby. Usually, we are running 125, 130 laps before anybody puts tires on.

“We knew that we had a good long run car. Our strategy, obviously, was to try to stay out there and not get lapped. It just took so long for the thing to get speed back in it, especially when everyone had new tires.

“It was just pure luck when that caution came out. Majeski was just four cars behind us. We were about to go a lap down. If that run had gone 10 more laps, we wouldn’t be here at all. We would have been fighting to get back on the lead lap.

“You talk to everybody here that’s fast, Thorn, Majeski, everyone, I’m sure Honeycutt will say the same thing. Luck’s got to be on your side, and it was today. We were able to capitalize on it.”

Hansen lost the lead to Majeski on a lap 208 restart, but maintained the second position until the race’s final caution on lap 272. Ultimately, Hansen finished in the fourth position, an impressive showing for a smaller team from the West making the trip to Pensacola.

“It’s just hard to do,” said Hansen. “It’s hard to have the funding for that, you know what I mean? All of our guys are volunteers. They don’t get paid to come and do this stuff. They take time off of work, they take PTO. That just makes it that even more difficult on all of us.

“Luckily, I’m a business owner with my dad. We own a plumbing shop, and we’ve got some good employees that are helping us out right now. Me and him are able to take off when we need to. Just the fact that he lets me rather than telling me I have to stay home.

“Everything that’s going on right now is awesome. To finish fourth here and lead laps, put our name out there is super-exciting. I’m just super anxious to see what comes up here in the next couple of months.”

-Photo credit: Will Bellamy, Racing America