Jace Hansen Delivers Improbable Run at the Snowball Derby

PENSACOLA, Fla. – The little team that could nearly did at the 2024 Snowball Derby.

Race winner Kaden Honeycutt may have been victorious in the 57th edition of the race, but Jace Hansen and his No. 08 nearly stole the show.

The Snowball Derby has long been a who’s who of names in short track racing, with storyline soften like by regular stars like Stephen Nasse, Bubba Pollard and Ty Majeski. But on occasion an underdog comes along and tries to shock the world.

This year, that was Hansen. Few people would have had the Greeley, Co., native on their radar through the Derby. But when it came time to race this past Sunday (Dec. 8) at Five Flags Speedway, Hansen and the Preston Peltier Racing team put on a show.

Hansen elected not to take tires when most of the field did after a lap-77 yellow, saving his three sets for later in the day. He dropped as down as 22nd under the ensuing run, but a caution at lap 116 allowed Hansen to use the first set that others had already used.

From there, the show began. Hansen restarted in 19th at lap 125. Just 67 laps later, he was passing Majeski for the lead. To the delight of the Pensacola crowd, the underdog had driven to the front of the biggest short track race in the world.

Hansen held his own through the final 100 laps, restarting outside leader Majeski with just 21 laps to go. But the ultimate upset wasn’t mean to be. Honeycutt and Nasse cleared Hansen on the restart, leaving him to settle for a solid fourth at day’s end.

As Hansen awaited the final results from post-race tech, he and the team were all smiles – despite some disappointment about what could have been.

“Absolutely, now that I’ve gotten calmed down a little bit,” Hansen told Frontstretch when asked if he was happy post-race. “But I was pretty frustrated with myself right after the race was over because I left plenty on the table. It’s hard to hold your head (up), but when you know your car was as good as it was, it’s hard to not be upset.

“I’m just super happy about how everything went, just this group. I mean we kind of just all came together really quickly, It wasn’t like we planned it out. We just got this car two months ago. … If i was racing every other weekend like these guys do I feel like we might’ve even been able to finish a little bit better. But that’s alright, all you can ask for is a car that can win this race and I think we had it, I just need to get better behind the wheel.”

Achieving this level of success is no easy feat. There are extended challenges for a smaller team to come and compete at the Derby, and stay competitive with the top dogs of the sport. Those challenges are only steeper when traveling across the country like Hansen and company do from Colorado.

“I mean it’s frustrating,” Hansen said. “As you can see, we don’t get the opportunity to race like every other weekend. I mean we can, if we travel to the east coast or the west coast, it’s just hard to do and hard to have the funding for that. And all of our guys are volunteers.

“Everything going on right now is just awesome,” he later added. “To finish fourth and lead laps, just put our name out there, is super exciting.”

The move that helped get Jansen to the front was the alternate tire strategy his team played during the race. Past experience told the group it was too early for tires, so they took a gamble and banked on a caution. They got one just in the nick of time.

“That was 100% luck,” Hansen said. “We just couldn’t wrap our heads around the fact that everybody put tires on that early in an 80 lap run. I mean we’ve ran here numerous years, this is our fourth Derby and usually we’re running into 125-130 laps before anybody puts tires on. As soon as that happened we thought it was too early, and we knew we had a good long run car, … Just pure luck when that caution came out, I mean Majeski was four cars behind us and we were about to go a lap down. If that run had gone 10 more laps, we wouldn’t be here at all.”

Hansen had a shot on the final restart, taking the green outside the front row. He expect to relive that last chance at the lead in his head until he gets another chance at the Derby next December.

“That restart will haunt me every night that I go to bed for the next 365 days until we’re back here again,” Hansen said. “To leave that much on the table like that, I just got too inside my head and was afraid I was gonna spin the tires so I started in second [gear] and I shoulda started in first. Little stupid mistakes like that end up costing you three positions.

“That’s how you learn, I guess.”