Lined up on the roof of Dave Hance's fancy black '93 Mustang were three World Street Nationals trophies.
 
One was for being the $3,000 Mickey Thompson Drag Radial class winner -- and recipient of a championship jacket that will make him the envy of racers and fans and his friends in his Long Island neighborhood of Inwood, N.Y.
 
Another was for the "Clean Sweep Award" -- along with a $1,000 bonus -- he earned for being the winner, No. 1 qualifier, and driver to set low elapsed time at the 17th annual door slammer extravaganza at Orlando Speed World Dragway.

Lined up on the roof of Dave Hance's fancy black '93 Mustang were three World Street Nationals trophies.
 
One was for being the $3,000 Mickey Thompson Drag Radial class winner -- and recipient of a championship jacket that will make him the envy of racers and fans and his friends in his Long Island neighborhood of Inwood, N.Y.
 
Another was for the "Clean Sweep Award" -- along with a $1,000 bonus -- he earned for being the winner, No. 1 qualifier, and driver to set low elapsed time at the 17th annual door slammer extravaganza at Orlando Speed World Dragway.
 
The third trophy was for leading the field with the 7.346-second pass Hance used to nudge Mel Nelson (his eventual final-round opponent) from the No. 1 spot in a last-minute fifth qualifying session.
 
("They tell me we get bonus money! And more trophies!" Hance said, his boyish enthusiasm leaping out.)
 
Those three trophies made sense. But Hance plopped three more items on the roof. They didn't make sense -- unless you know Dave Hance and how far he has come in his racing career. What's sitting on the roof of the racecar, as much a part of the winners circle as the trophies, the trophy girls, and the lined-up crew, were a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly, and a loaf of bread. What in the world. . . ?
 
"Back in the old days, 20 years ago or so, when all of us had no money," crew member Scotty Guadagno said, "we were racing low-budget cars, that's all we had to live on. And believe me, that's what we lived on every day. You went to Dave's apartment, all you would find in the cabinet and the refrigerator was peanut butter and jelly and some white bread. That's it. That's all we had. That's why he brings it with him everywhere he goes. Oh, he eats it now -- when you go in his trailer, that's all you see: peanut butter and jelly. Believe me when I tell you -- it's true."
 
Hance defended himself: "That was quick! That was cheap!"
 
He was quick Sunday, but his performance wasn't cheap. He plowed through the field, eliminating Floridians Kirk Hatley, Ari Birchfield, and Angelo Graham, then Steve Turley, before surviving in the final with a swift, clean 7.29-second, 206.13 pass while Nelson took a frighteningly wild ride and ended up crossing into Hance's lane behind him and keeping his own '02 Camaro off the wall.
 
"Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his car flinch," Hance said. "But that County Auto Mustang was really going, so I had to keep my eyes on it. We were floating the wheels a little bit ourselves. He said he shook. We both turned it up. We both knew we wanted to rock and roll."
 
The victory, the near-catastrophe at the top end of the final run, just finally getting he car dialed in -- it all seemed a bit hard for Hance to believe . . . except for his comfort food sitting there to remind him of struggling and overcoming. He said he certainly did not think that this would be a winning weekend.
 
"I was a bit disappointed," he said. "The whole weekend we couldn't get down (the track). It was constantly finding, finding, finding. After that fourth qualifying session, which was supposed to be the last, I got down far enough that I knew what I had to do. So when they said, 'You've got an extra one,' we went out there and it did what I was hoping it would do.
 
"The real credit goes to the crew; Randy Connor, our crew chief; Don Bailey, our tuner (who does the same job for ADRL driver Spiro Pappas)," he said. "It's really them. They gave me an awesome car. I just jumped in and had to let it go."
 
Said Hance, "Hats off to Orlando for giving the fans an extra round, and a good round it was in all classes. What can you say? We're tickled."
 
He morphed from an animated race winner to a promoter in a subtle second. But that's what Dave Hance is: part promoter, part racer. He's the architect of a Northeast outlaw race at Englishtown, N.J.'s Old Bridge Township Raceway Park that started 10 years after these World Street Nationals but has become a must-enter fall free-for-all.
 
Hance dances around established dates to make choices easier for the racer -- after all, he has competed in the World Street Nationals since 2001 with a variety of his own cars. And many of these drivers at Orlando -- including winners Chuck Ulsch (Outlaw 10.5), Gary Naughton (Heavy Street), and Coby Rabon (Super Pro Street) --  plan to hail their cars to New Jersey for the rain-rescheduled Shakedown at E-Town this coming weekend.   
 
Hance might be a whiz at slapping together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but take a tip from Guadgano: Say no thank-you if Hance offers you spaghetti. The old tale goes that Hance's racing buddies found a bowl of spaghetti that had been left in the refrigerator so long it was sprouting mold. "That must be broccoli or something," Hance told them. (He confessed to the fib, saying, "I tried to play it off.")
 
This World Street Nationals victory wasn't Hance's first race triumph, by any means. The  peanut butter and jelly, while still a legitimate lunch for Hance, simply serves as a reminder of how much he has progressed. But it paid enough to shelve the peanut butter and jelly, maybe at least for one night, so he and his team can enjoy a steak dinner.

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