Of course if you swap over to hood pins you can do away with the hood latch, release handle and cable, hinges, much of the reinforcement under the hood...and at the same time not worry about that part of the frame even more.
I may have missed this at some other point in your thread...but were there any changes in how stable the car feels at higher speeds? Mainly curious about the effect of the changes to the front end and belly pan. I'm assuming that's not even remotely a concern given your intended use case but just wondering if you'd given it a try.